Muir Eaton, associate professor of biology at Drake and longtime bird researcher with a PhD in ornithology, has contributed data on hundreds of bird species to BirdColourBase. An international consortium of 17 research labs in eight countries on three continents have provided information to the database, which holds data on more than 3,000 species of birds.
“Researchers have been accumulating bird coloration data for years, and the idea behind BirdColourBase is to unify that data, in the same way that (for example) the National Institutes of Health’s GenBank provides a database for genetic sequencing information,” Eaton said.
Bird coloration data provides a scientifically quantifiable method of describing the colors of birds. While two birds may appear similar to the human eye, the use of spectrophotometry helps scientists to record the specific color traits of each bird, including the presence of ultraviolet coloration that is invisible to the human eye—but visible to other birds.
“[Eaton’s] dataset is particularly important due to the range of species sampled,” said Than-Lan Gluckman, an evolutionary biologist who is co-organizing the BirdColourBase database along with John Endler, an ethologist and evolutionary at Deakin University in Australia.
Eaton teaches courses related to introductory biology, vertebrate biology, ornithology, winter avian ecology, museum curation, and evolution. He often recruits undergraduate students to assist with his avian research, and he leads a senior capstone experience for students pursuing a major in biology.