In 2026, Bryant Dossman, PhD, joined Audubon as the brand new director and principal scientist of the Audubon Everglades Analysis Station (AERS) in Tavernier. Hailing from Newark, New Jersey, his “spark” birds had been the Home Sparrows that had been frequent within the neighborhood the place he grew up.
We sat down with Bryant to study extra about his background and what obtained him enthusiastic about working at Audubon Florida.
Q: At Audubon, we like to ask: What was your flight path? What introduced you to Audubon Florida?
A: I’ve been getting ready for a possibility like this for years, and I really feel so fortunate to be an ornithologist right here at this historic analysis station. What an incredible place to be. I’m excited to observe within the footsteps of my predecessors, significantly Robert Porter Allen, whose research of Bald Eagles, California Condors, and Whooping Cranes had been groundbreaking.
Throughout my undergraduate research at Bowdoin Faculty in Maine, I obtained a style of what a life in science might seem like by engaged on a long-term Savannah Sparrow research at Kent Island, which set me on my present trajectory. I went on to get my M.Sc. from The Ohio State College, the place I met my future spouse (and present Nationwide Audubon Society employees member) Alicia Brunner. I finally went to Jamaica for my Ph.D. at Cornell, the place I targeted on the wintering ecology of American Redstarts.
Earlier than becoming a member of the Audubon flock, I held a postdoctoral place at Georgetown College and a analysis affiliate appointment on the Smithsonian Migratory Hen Middle. I believe I’ll slot in effectively right here due to my background in avian habits, motion, and inhabitants ecology.
Q: What do you see as a future focus of Audubon’s Everglades Analysis Station?
A: Audubon has spent a number of time on wading chicken populations right here, which have been very good indicators of what’s going on within the ecosystem from an Everglades restoration perspective. However I believe that’s only one aspect of the story. One taxon that has not been studied right here sufficient is the land chicken neighborhood that additionally depends on the restoration efforts within the Everglades however makes use of the atmosphere in barely alternative ways than the wading chicken neighborhood.
A giant imaginative and prescient of mine is to know higher how Everglades restoration efforts are finally impacting the chicken communities extra holistically. That features the residents and migrant land birds and shorebirds which can be solely right here for a number of months of the 12 months to the year-round resident wading chicken neighborhood. Understanding particular person motion and inhabitants dynamics is essential to this endeavor as they reply dynamically to the altering ecological circumstances of the Everglades ecosystem and ongoing restoration efforts. To do that, I plan to implement a sturdy chicken monitoring program that goals at higher understanding how environmental circumstances and restoration efforts drive particular person motion and finally scale to influence inhabitants dynamics.
Q: What analysis questions do you hope to reply?
A: There’s a lot we will study habitat connections all through a chicken’s full annual cycle, significantly how environmental circumstances through the nonbreeding season in a single location can carry over to affect breeding effort elsewhere.
I’m excited to study extra about how birds use these habitats, even the birds that we solely see for a number of weeks every season throughout migration. For instance, Whip-poor-wills that winter right here within the Everglades are largely related to the northeastern inhabitants, which is among the many most quickly declining. What’s driving that decline?
The Everglades is a large expanse of habitat that is a vital bottleneck for birds coming by the Caribbean to the Florida peninsula. Monitoring knowledge exhibits us that the birds passing by listed below are getting related to in all places, from japanese Nova Scotia to even Alaska, so clearly Florida performs an outsized influence on what these birds want throughout migration. However how a lot?
Q: How do you intend to review land birds?
A: One solution to monitor habitat use of uncommon and elusive species is by recording their sounds with Acoustic Recording Items (ARUs), that are knowledge loggers that always file audio knowledge. They may also help us higher perceive the place birds are positioned on the panorama, the habitats they use, and the place they aren’t discovered. Importantly, for our wading chicken communities, we will additionally consider the place profitable nesting happens by figuring out the distinctive calls of nestlings and juveniles. The tactic supplies a sturdy solution to monitor a number of chicken species concurrently, even in essentially the most distant parts of Florida Bay and Everglades.
One other low-cost manner of monitoring birds is to make use of small Motus stations with a single omni antenna. By establishing a community of those receivers, we will accumulate knowledge on chicken presence and absence inside a pair hundred meters of the receiver and perceive how birds transfer throughout distinct panorama options similar to particular person keys and foraging areas for wading birds whereas additionally monitoring the actions of migrants using the Florida Bay seasonally. These knowledge additionally present a method to estimate survival, an vital demographic that’s important for predicting population-level responses. It is simply one other software in our pocket that we will leverage for understanding the habits and inhabitants dynamics of birds inside this ecosystem.
Q: How do you anticipate discovering the sources you could do that work?
Along with getting science grants and leveraging federal funds, I’ve collaborators throughout the western hemisphere with related pursuits that may assist broaden our analysis capability right here. Coupled with our improbable boots-on-the-ground analysis group and native consultants, we will collectively have a big effect.
In the end, it boils right down to utilizing the info to inform tales. Simply listening to the sounds of a key through the center of the winter season can get somebody excited concerning the work being carried out. Fortunately, Audubon Florida and the Nationwide Audubon Society are nice mouthpieces, finally serving to flip our science into conservation tales that may get everybody on board with the work we’re doing right here.
Q: How do you envision carrying the Everglades Analysis Station’s legacy ahead into the longer term?
A: That is an incredible place to coach and mentor college students and incoming scientists. College students can get a historic perspective of the place we have now been, a up to date perspective of what we’re doing, and work with us and others to determine the place the science is taking us sooner or later. Lengthy-term techniques are invaluable alternatives for mentoring. All elements come collectively into an amazing ecological perspective.
Many present employees members at AERS are early-career scientists. My objective is to assist them step towards larger alternatives by broadening their skillsets, with hands-on expertise tagging, banding, and monitoring birds and doing normal fieldwork to allow them to exit and ask extra questions. I hope to ascertain collaborations with people at universities to broaden our analysis capability and assist broaden the views our analysis group is uncovered to. Getting extra folks excited to ask questions is a vital side of broadening our work.
Q: There’s a lot to do. How do you keep grounded?
A: I used to be fortunate to get out on the water at the moment, and from the second we left the dock, it was nonstop nature: manatees, prey fish, ospreys perched on markers. It was nice to be on the market, taking a second to decelerate and take into consideration what is going on throughout us and revel in watching the birds are available to forage when the tide was dropping. Once we are always on the go, in conferences, it’s straightforward to overlook to breathe and mirror on the science behind the questions we’re pursuing. You will need to watch the Prairie Warblers and take a while to suppose. Nature Rx is actual, and it is an vital a part of the scientific course of.
