Joe Wunderle

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As an Emeritus Research Wildlife Biologist with the USDA Forest Service's International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF) in Puerto Rico, Joe has more than 40 years of experience teaching and conducting research throughout the Caribbean. An underlying theme of his research is disturbance ecology, a perspective that has helped him prescribe conservation actions for bird populations threatened by disturbance by hurricanes, droughts, agriculture, and selective logging. Hurricane effects have become a special interest after hurricanes struck his study sites, providing baseline data for before and after comparisons. His introduction to Caribbean ecology began with his dissertation (Ph.D., 1980, Univ. of Minnesota) fieldwork conducted on the island of Grenada while supporting himself by teaching field courses in the nearby Grenadines. He was also a co-cordinator/instructor of a tropical ecology with the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) where he taught zoology courses and supervised research with his students for eight years before joining the International Institute of Tropical Forestry where his research focused on the ecology and conservation of threatened migrant and resident birds.

 

He has authored or co-authored over 100 publications based on his research, which he conducted throughout the Caribbean and Bahamas as well as in Central America and Brazil.  He recently co-authored a field guide to the natural history of The Bahamas based on his 15 years of research in The Bahamas. His Bahamian work focuses on the threatened Kirtland’s Warbler, and associated bird species, as well as their arthropod and fruit food resources.  He is a founding member and former President of BirdsCaribbean and former President of the Neotropical Ornithological Society, a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and a recipient of its Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award. He currently is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Caribbean Ornithology and Board Member of BirdsCaribbean, while also working on a backlog of manuscripts with students and colleagues. He currently resides in Athens, Georgia where his wife Jean Lodge is Curator of Mycology at the Georgia Museum of Natural History and adjunct faculty member at the University of Georgia. They return to the Caribbean at least yearly to continue participating in a Christmas Bird Count Joe initiated with his students and others over 31 years ago.​

 

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