Richard Prum

Birders had recently seen the hooded warbler, a small but striking migratory species in the area.

And before he even parked, Richard Prum, who is a birdwatcher, was calling out the names of birds he glimpsed or heard through the car window.

Osprey, Purple Martin, Red-winged Blackbird.

I asked him how he was able to recognize birds so quickly and sometimes at such a great distance.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so my advisor, Rick Prum, in 1999, came up with this theory of feather evolution based on feather development, and this is sort of classic evo-devo, using development to understand evolution.

Yeah.

The way that feathers cells evolved, or sort of the groups that they evolved from are actually, we think, related to the organization of the skin.