Jessie L. Williamson, a research associate at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico (UNM), has been awarded the 2024 Tom L. Popejoy Dissertation Prize. The award will be presented during UNM’s fall graduate commencement ceremony on December 12.
Williamson is recognized for her work as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow in biology and a Rose Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Museum of Vertebrates. She is also affiliated with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University.
Her research focuses on how elevation affects bird migration, physiology, and genomic divergence. Williamson earned both her master's and Ph.D. in biology from UNM, completing her doctorate in 2022 with a dissertation titled “The role of elevation in the migration, physiology, and genomic diversification of birds.”
Williamson described her research as examining how elevational gradients influence eco-climatic variation over short distances, affecting diversity, diversification, seasonal movement, and species resilience amid climate change. She noted that partial pressure of oxygen presents significant challenges at high elevations, leading most Neotropical bird species to have narrow elevational ranges. However, some are generalists spanning sea level to high elevations or undertake extreme migratory journeys biannually.
“My dissertation combined diverse approaches across levels of biological organization to understand how elevation impacts the ecology, evolution, physiology and migration of montane birds,” she said. Her work included studying extreme elevational migration globally, blood physiology in Andean hummingbirds, and various aspects of giant hummingbirds.
A significant finding from her dissertation was that "extreme" elevational migration can facilitate speciation. “We now know that the world's largest hummingbird is two deeply divergent species,” she said. These findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Williamson expressed honor in receiving the Popejoy Prize: “This dissertation involved intensive data collection from the coasts of Chile to the high Andes of Peru. It took more than 9 months in the field.” She credited resources from the Museum of Southwestern Biology for enabling her work.
In August next year, Williamson will join the University of Wyoming as an assistant professor in their Department of Zoology and Physiology.
The Popejoy Dissertation Prize honors Tom L. Popejoy's legacy as UNM president from 1948 to 1968 by recognizing academic excellence through a competitive process among academic units every three years. The prize includes a $2,500 stipend awarded during fall commencement.
For more information about eligibility for this prize or details on nominations, interested parties can visit online resources or contact grad@unm.edu.
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