Dr. Jeremy J. Kirchman

Curator of Birds and Mammals
jeremy.kirchman@nysed.gov
518-474-1441

I am broadly interested in the evolution and biogeography of birds, but most of my research focuses on populations found on islands. Islands have long been considered “natural laboratories of evolution”, and studying birds on islands teaches us much about speciation, extinction, and adaptation.  I have a special interest in one group of birds, the rails (Rallidae), which are great island colonists, found even on the most remote oceanic islands.  Many rail species have evolved to become totally flightless on islands that lack mammalian predators. Closer to home, I am studying several species of birds that breed in “islands” of coniferous (boreal) forest isolated above 3000 feet of elevation in New York’s mountain ranges. I want to know if these populations of Bicknell’s Thrush, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Spruce Grouse and other boreal forest specialists are genetically isolated and evolving independently of one another. These high-elevation populations may be imperiled as the climate continues to warm.

Publications

2012

Landing, E., 2012. Extended Abstract—The Great American Carbonate Bank in Eastern Laurentia: Its Births, Deaths, and Linkage to Paleooceanic Oxygenation (Early Cambrian), in: Derby, J., Fritz, R., Longacre, S., Morgan, W., Sternbach, C. (Eds.), The Great American Carbonate Bank: The Geology and Economic Resources of the Cambrian. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma, pp. 253a-260a.
Landing, E., 2012. The Great American Carbonate Bank in Eastern Laurentia: Its Births, Deaths, and Linkage to Paleooceanic Oxygenation (Early Cambrian, in: Derby, J., Fritz, R., Longacre, S., Morgan, W., Sternbach, C. (Eds.), The Great American Carbonate Bank: The Geology and Economic Resources of the Cambrian. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma, pp. 451-492.
E. Landing, B. Kroger 2012, Cephalopod Ancestry and Ecology of the Hyolith ’Allatheca’ degeeri s.l. in the Cambrian Evolutionary Radiation, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 353-355, 21-30. 10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.06.023
E. Landing 2012, Correction: Proposal of the Four Global Series of the Cambrian, Bulletin of Geosciences 87, 625-627. 10.3140/bull.geosci.1332
E. Landing, S. Bowser, S. Reyes, A. Andreas 2012, First Discovery of Early Palaeozoic Bathysiphon (Foraminifera) - Test Structure and Habitat of a ’Living Fossil’, Geological Magazine 149, 1013-1022. 10.1017/S0016756812000155
E. Landing 2012, Time-specific Black Mudstones and Global Hyperwarming on the Cambrian-Ordovician Slope and Shelf of the Laurentia Palaeocontinent, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 367-368, 256-272. 10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.09.005
E. Landing, S. Westrop, B. Kroger, J. Adrian 2012, Tribes Hill-Rochdale Formations in East Laurentia: Proxies for Early Ordovician (Tremadocian) Eustasy on a Tropical Passive Margin (New York and West Vermont), Geological Magazine 149, 93-123. 10.1017/S0016756811000598

2011

E. Landing, M. Moczydlowska, W. Zang, T. Palacio 2011, Proterozoic Phytoplankton and Timing of Chlorophyte Algae Origins, Palaeontology 54, 721-733. 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01054.x
E. Landing, J. Keppie, M. Streng, B. Melbin 2011, Linguliform Brachiopods from the Terminal Cambrian and Lowest Ordovician of the Oaxaquia Microcontinent (Southern Mexico), Journal of Paleontology 85, 122-155. 10.1666/10-074.1
E. Landing, S. Westrop, J. Adrain 2011, The Cambrian (Sunwaptan, Furongian) Agnostoid Arthropod Lotagnostus Whitehouse, 1936, in Laurentian and Avalonian North America: Systematics and Biostratigraphic Significance, Bulletin of Geosciences 86, 569-594.