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Brief Description: Jason will take us on a virtual tour of some exciting specimens housed at the Academy, focusing on a selection of birds that are extinct, endangered or (at least at one time) little-known. He will share some stories about the biology of these unusual birds and discuss why they are interesting or even unique.
Brief Biography: Dr. Jason Weckstein is an associate professor in the Department of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science (BEES) at Drexel University and associate curator in the Department of Ornithology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel. He obtained his B.S. degree in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan in 1993, his M.S. in Zoology from the University of Minnesota, and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 2003. His dissertation research used DNA sequences to reconstruct the coevolutionary history and host-parasite associations between toucans and their ectoparasites. After obtaining the Ph.D. he continued studying birds and parasites as a postdoctoral fellow with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where he stayed on as a staff scientist until joining the BEES faculty in 2014.
Weckstein is a fellow of the American Ornithological Society and has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications and delivered over 50 presentations at universities and at national and international scientific meetings. In addition to his twenty years of experience at natural history museums, he has conducted research on birds and their parasites in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Ghana, Malawi, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Mexico. In addition to providing teaching & training, and doing research, Jason’s additional interests at the Academy include collection-building, curation, and public outreach.
His current research program focuses on three main areas: 1) avian comparative biology and evolutionary history, 2) biodiversity surveys of birds and their parasites and pathogens, and 3) coevolutionary history of birds and their parasites. His research involves both active field-collecting of bird and associated parasite specimens and analysis of DNA sequence data to reconstruct the ecology and evolutionary history of birds and their parasites.
Jason holding a Jacana