Pamela Rasmussen

From Wild India

Pamela C Rasmussen is the co-author of the Book "Field Guide to the Birds of South Asia," along with S. Dillon Ripley and John Anderton.

Introduction

Dr. Rasmussen studies the biodiversity, systematics, vocalizations, biogeography, and conservation of Asian birds, and has recently completed a two-volume book on the area's birds. Over the past few years she has independently or collaboratively discovered and described four Asian bird species new to science, and is currently describing two additional new species. She is undertaking research to test ecological and biogeographic hypotheses regarding latitudinal, climatic, insular, and altitudinal patterns of geographic variation in morphology, dimorphism, vocalizations, and diversity in South Asian birds. In a recent collaboration, she and co-authors showed (using morphology, hybrid experiments, and DNA) that the Imperial Pheasant, previously thought critically endangered, is actually of hybrid origin and not a valid species. She and an NHM colleague are completing analysis of an extensively fraudulent bird collection with important implications for ornithology. Recently, she collaborated at the Smithsonian Institution on a study of the largest known Mio-Pliocene marine avifauna.

Selected Publications

• Rasmussen, P. C. & J. C. Anderton. In press (2004). Birds of South Asia: the Ripley Guide. Two volumes. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
• Hennache, A., P. Rasmussen, V. Lucchini, S. Rimoldi & E. Randi. 2003. Hybrid origin of the Imperial Pheasant Lophura imperialis (Delacour and Jabouille, 1924) demonstrated by morphology, hybrid experiments, and DNA analyses. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 80: 573-600.
• Rasmussen, P.C., and R. P. Prys-Jones. 2003. History vs. mystery: the reliability of museum specimen data. Pp. 66-94 in Collar, N.J., Fisher, C.T. & Feare, C.J. (eds.) Why museums matter: avian archives in an age of extinction. Bull. Brit. Orn. Club 123A: 1-360.
• Olson, S. L., and P. C. Rasmussen. 2001. Survey of a Middle Miocene and a very extensive early Pliocene avifauna from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina. Pp. 233-365 in Ray, C.E. and Bohaska, D.J. (eds.). Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek Mine, III. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 90: 233-365.