Alexander Wilson Prize

The Alexander Wilson Prize is awarded for the best paper presented at the WOS Annual Meeting with a student as the sole presenting author. Occasionally, at larger WOS meetings, the Council approves additional awards. In most years, awards include a $300 prize.

Award Recipients

2022Alex Sidare, Canisius College: “Are flight calls used for intraspecific or interspecific communication in two species of warblers?”
2021Lucy Zipf, Wellesley College: “Investigating the Effects of Management of Artificial Nest Boxes on Bird Reproductive Performance in Massachusetts Conservation Areas”
2020Facundo Fernandez-Duque, Cornell University: “Does getting the worm help the breeding bird? Supplemental feeding affects nestling growth in some taxa but not others”
2019Kiirsti Owen, University of Windsor: ‘‘Bird communities in an endangered tropical ecosystem: a bioacoustic approach to monitoring forest recovery’’
2018Lee Bryant, Arkansas State University: “Evaluating relationships between eastern hemlock decline and Louisiana Waterthrush demographics and behavior in Great Smoky Mountains National Park”
2017Betsy Evans, Florida Atlantic University: “Dietary plasticity of Wood Storks in response to human-induced rapid environmental change in south Florida”
2016Sahas Barve, Cornell University: “Elevational movement patterns drive hemoglobin concentration in Himalayan birds: a Tensing and Hillary story”
2015Megan Skrip, University of Rhode Island: “Migrating birds on stopover prepare for, and recover from, oxidative challenges posed by long-distance flight”
2014Dana Moseley, UMass Amherst: “Evidence of innate predispositions and learning of female preferences in Swamp Sparrows”
2013Daniel Baldassarre, Cornell University: “Experimental evidence of asymmetrical introgression of a sexual trait via extra-pair mating”
 Olga Milenkaya, Virginia Tech University: “Testing the condition-quality hypothesis: condition indices are repeatable but do not predict reproductive success or survival””
2012Andrés Cuervo, Louisiana State University: “Evolutionary assembly of the Andean avifauna: A comparative phylogeographic study of diversification and elevational distribution”

WOS Student Presentation Award: Kristen Dybala, University of California, Davis, and PRBO Conservation Science, “Effects of weather and fledge date on survival in juvenile Song Sparrows vary by developmental stage”
2011Nicole M. Davros, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: “An experimental test of density-dependent reproduction in Prothonotary Warblers, Protonotaria citrea“
2010Stephanie G. Wright, Villanova University: “Hybrid chickadee vocalizations change as the hybrid zone moves northward in southeastern Pennsylvania”
2009Sarah Pabian, The Pennsylvania State University: “Calcium and forest bird habitat quality”
2008Curtis W. Burney, Louisiana State University: “Comparative phylogeography of Neotropical birds: ecology predicts levels of genetic differentiation”
2007Kara Belinsky, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: “Are color and song redundant signals of male quality in chestnutsided warblers?”
2006Corey E. Tarwater, University of Illinois: “Life history implications of the post-fledging period in a neotropical passerine”
2005Christopher Hofmann, University of Maryland-Baltimore County: “Pigment co-deposition and the masking of carotenoids in Orchard and Fuertes’s orioles” (co-authored with Thomas Cronin, Kevin Omland, & Kevin McGraw)
2004Dana M. Hawley, Cornell University, “The price of the pecking order: how dominance status mediates immunity in wintering House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus)”
2003Natalie Dubois, “Does cavity availability affect female mate choice or maternal investment in House Wrens”
2002Kathi L. Borgmann: “Influence of landscape context on exotic shrub cover in riparian forests: implications for breeding birds”
2001Dawn E. W. Drumtra: “The importance of two habitat quality parameters, food and nest site availability, on settlement of Prothonotary Warblers, Protonotaria citrea“