By Susan Johnson
Copy Editor

Jeff Hoover was the featured speaker at the March 23 Annual Meeting of the Sinnissippi Audubon Society, at which The Rock River Times Editor & Publisher Frank Schier received the Adult Conservationist of the Year Award.

Hoover’s activities involve planning, developing and conducting field-oriented research on the ecology and conservation of birds, with applications to conservation and management issues in Illinois. He conducts both basic and applied research, addressing questions and testing hypotheses both with field experiments and correlational studies.

He studies behavioral ecology, population dynamics, ecological factors affecting diversity and community composition, variation in life-history traits, and the effects of ecosystem restoration on biotic communities.

He said: “My research spans hierarchical levels of biological organization including individuals, populations, communities and ecosystems. It is important to me that my research leads to scientific discovery, furthers the field of ecology, and is relevant to conservation.”

For the past 15 years, he has studied the ecology of birds (particularly migratory songbirds) in forest and grassland ecosystems of the Midwestern and Eastern U.S. A specific focus was to determine how landscape composition affects selective ecological forces such as nest predation and brood parasitism in breeding birds. Hoover explained, “I examine how these forces directly influence community structure, population dynamics, and breeding decisions in birds, and apply the results of my research to ongoing ecosystem restoration projects.”

Focal species are an integral part of his research program, such as an 11-year study of breeding populations of prothonotary warblers in southern Illinois.

This study represents one of the most detailed and extensive data sets ever recorded for a migratory passerine. It produced valuable information on the between-year breeding site fidelity of adults and now supports many new research directions and collaborations.

Hoover is the author or co-author of a number of publications concerning animal ecology. He has a Ph.D. in animal biology from the University of Illinois, an MS in wildlife and fisheries science from Pennsylvania State University, and a BS in wildlife management from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.

From the April 13-19, 2011 issue