Build It, And The Birds Will Come
The end of the year, the end of the University of Alaska Fairbanks semester, and the end of an important part of one student's career arrived close together in 1997. George Divoky successfully defended his doctoral dissertation this December.
It took me a long time to notice just how much working toward a doctoral degree in the sciences differs from working toward an undergraduate degree, so I'm not surprised when people who've spent less time on university turf don't understand it. For example, Divoky hadn't taken a formal class in years. That doesn't mean he hadn't been working on his degree. He'd been carrying out independent research, with the (often long-distance) guidance of his major professor, Dr. Ed Murphy, and a committee of professors who'd long since earned their doctor of philosophy degrees.
Divoky had passed required postgraduate classes, of course, but to earn a doctorate he had to show the scientific community what he's done, so he needed to explain and answer questions about it in a public presentation. This "oral defense" is an inescapable hurdle for a would-be Ph.D.
Summarizing the effort within the scheduled hour was in itself a neat trick, for Divoky's research has been continuing since 1972. Back then it seemed that Alaska's oil might go to market by tanker through the Northwest Passage, and various agencies decided they'd better finance studies of Arctic Ocean shores and seas likely to be affected by tanker traffic or possible spills. Among the studies was a three-year effort on seabirds in the Barrow area, and among the technicians heading north to do the work was Divoky. He quickly discovered one major hitch in the study plan: no seabirds. That is, there were none that matched the project's definition, birds that leave their nests to feed at sea and generally breed on rocky cliffs or similar predator- discouraging terrain. Confronting the prospect of three unproductive years hiking the flat Arctic coastline trying to find a few birds, Divoky opted instead to experiment with creating a seabird colony.
Fortunately for him, one seabird, the black guillemot, doesn't need cliffs for nesting; it just needs some sort of roof over its head. Black guillemots are dapper pigeon-sized birds, sleek black except for white wing patches and scarlet legs. They had been seen around Barrow since the 1880s, and one nest had been found in 1966.
Furthermore, about 25 miles east of Barrow lay a potential nest site. Cooper Island, a lump of flat land, was well littered with postwar military trash. Divoky assembled some of the woody bits and slabs into guillemot-sized birdhouses. Five pairs of black guillemots promptly set up housekeeping.
By 1989, after Divoky had tracked down other funding sources and moved more trash, more than 200 guillemot pairs called Cooper Island home. The number of pairs closely matched the number of nesting shelters provided, a point clearly illustrated by elegant bar graphs during Divoky's presentation. Thus, he hypothesized, black guillemot populations may be limited by the lack of suitable nest sites.
He also continued work through enough field seasons to check another hypothesis. Experts believed that seabirds are philopatric--that is, they are loyal to established nesting sites, and adults tend to return to the places where they hatched. An Icelandic scientist had developed a mathematical model predicting the extent over time by which a black guillemot colony would increasingly consist of its own former chicks. But every year Divoky banded birds hatched on Cooper Island, and bandless birds continued to predominate in his colony; the model was wrong. Black guillemots, it seems, are always on the prowl for new homes.
Divoky's public presentation went well, though--of course--his committee raised tough questions that student Divoky must answer in the written dissertation before he becomes Dr. Divoky. Then, probably, the black guillemots of Cooper Island will wonder where the dickens their housebuilder went.
