LAS Biological Sciences Researcher Megan Garfinkel Awarded Florence Merriam Bailey Award by the American Ornithological Society awards here.
The new Florence Merriam Bailey Award, named for the first woman “associate” of the AOU (1885) and the first woman elected as a Fellow of the AOU (1929), recognizes an outstanding article published in Ornithology (odd-numbered years) and in Ornithological Applications (even-numbered years) by an early-career AOS member. The inaugural Florence Merriam Bailey Award was recently given to Dr. Megan Garfinkel, lead author of the paper, “Birds suppress pests in corn but release them in soybean crops within a mixed prairie/agriculture system,” published in Ornithological Applications in 2020. Garfinkel and her co-authors, Emily Minor and C.J. Whelan, demonstrate the potential impact of birds on row crop fields in heavily agriculturalized settings, showing that corn yield was greater in plots open to bird foraging, but greater in soybean fields from which birds were excluded. Dr. Garfinkel’s research demonstrates the potential role of birds in herbivore pest control, a vastly understudied aspect of the agroecosystems. You can find out more about the American Ornithological Society awards here.