2023 AOS Harry R. Painton Award to Natália Stefanini Da Silveira and Honorable Mentions to Rachael W. Herman and Sarah P. Saunders

Natália Stefanini Da Silveira Rachael W. Herman Sarah P. Saunders The AOS Harry R. Painton Award, given in odd-numbered years, is presented to the author of an outstanding paper published in the two preceding years in Ornithological Applications. The award was established in 1961 through a bequest from physician and eminent amateur ornithologist Harry Painton; a history of the Painton Award, including winners from 1961 to 1993, was published in The Condor in 1994. The 2023 Harry R. Painton Award recipient is Natália Stefanini Da Silveira for her paper “Future climate change will impact the size and location of breeding and wintering areas of migratory thrushes in South America” (Da Silveira et al. 2021). Natália Stefanini Da Silveira has a degree in biological sciences from the State University of São Paulo (UNESP), and a master’s degree and doctorate from the postgraduate program in zoology, Institute of Biosciences, UNESP, Rio Claro. In her postgraduate studies, she examined animal movement at different scales—focusing on birds—from regional movements to migrations and the impact of environmental changes on these systems. She is currently a postdoctoral candidate at the Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab (LEEC; UNESP-RC), and works in partnership with Tropical Water Research Alliance (TWRA) on a project for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation in the Tocantins–Araguaia Hydrographic Basin. In their winning paper, “Future climate change will impact the size and location of breeding and wintering areas of migratory thrushes in South America,” Da Silveira and her coauthors examined the potential impact of future climate change on migratory thrushes in South America—a region rich in migrating birds whose movement patterns are not well understood. The authors explored how the distribution of breeding and wintering areas in three closely related species of thrushes with different migratory patterns (one short- and two long-distance migrants) change under future climate change scenarios. They predicted declines in the area of future breeding and wintering grounds along with elevational and longitudinal shifts in distribution. Their paper is the first of its kind to describe how climate change may affect migratory birds in South America, showing that impacts will differ depending on where species breed and overwinter. Da Silveira, N. S., M. H. Vancine, A. E Jahn, M. A. Pizo, and T. Sobral-Souza (2021). Future climate change will ­impact the size and location of breeding and wintering areas of migratory thrushes in South America, Ornithological Applications 123:duab006. https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithapp/duab006 This year, the AOS additionally recognizes two individuals for honorable mention: Rachael W. Herman for her paper “Age-structured model reveals prolonged immigration is key for colony establishment in Gentoo Penguins” (Herman and Lynch 2022) and Sarah Saunders for her paper “Bridging the research-implementation gap in avian conservation with translational ecology” (Saunders et al. 2021). Rachael W. Herman is a Ph.D. candidate and NASA FINESST fellow in Heather Lynch’s lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University. Her dissertation work focuses on population dynamics of Gentoo Penguins (Pygoscelis papua). Using a combination of remote-sensing assets, population modeling, and population genomics, she is investigating how Gentoo Penguins are both increasing in population numbers and expanding their range farther south along the Antarctic Peninsula, and what environmental factors are facilitating these dramatic changes. Herman has previously been awarded two AOS travel awards to present her research at the American Ornithological Society conferences in 2016 and 2022. Herman, R. W., and H. J. Lynch (2022). Age-structured model reveals prolonged immigration is key for colony establishment in Gentoo Penguins. Ornithological Applications 124:duac014. https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithapp/duac014 Sarah Saunders is a senior manager of quantitative science at the National Audubon Society and is based out of her home office in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work predominantly focuses on the Great Lakes region, where she models occupancy, abundance, and population dynamics of breeding marsh birds, waterbirds, and shorebirds. She also works with Audubon’s Climate Watch program data to model how species’ occupancy dynamics are shifting with climate change. Saunders specializes in integrated modeling, including combining different migration data types to estimate migratory connectivity for North American bird species. She has served as a judge for the AOS student presentation awards and now serves on the Student and Postdoc Travel and Presentation Awards Committee. Saunders served as an associate editor for Ornithological Applications from 2020 to 2023. She was elected as an AOS Elective Member in 2022. Saunders, S. P., J. X. Wu, E. A. Gow, E. Adams, B. L. Bateman, T. Bayard, S. Beilke, A. A. Dayer, A. M. V. Fournier, K. Fox, P. Heglund, S. B. Lerman, N. L. Michel, E. H. Paxton, Ç. H. Şekercioğlu, M. A. Smith, W. Thogmartin, M. S. Woodrey, and C. van Riper, III (2021). Bridging the research-implementation gap in avian conservation with translational ecology. Ornithological Applications 123:duab018, https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithapp/duab018

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