
André Dhondt attending a conference during the summer of 2023.
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André Dhondt, Professor of Ornithology, retires after decades of scholarship
By Pat Leonard Kathi Borgmann
After decades of scholarship in both Europe and the United States, André Dhondt, Edwin H. Morgens Professor of Ornithology at Cornell University, will retire on January 17, 2025. His momentous contributions to Cornell, the Lab of Ornithology, and the field of ornithology cannot be overstated.
Prior to coming to Cornell Dhondt held a variety of research and teaching positions around the world and in his native Belgium.
Dhondt earned his PhD at Ghent State University in Belgium and went on to work in Madagascar and in Samoa with the United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organization. It was during these tours that Dhondt proudly recalls that he was the first to find nests of the Madagascar Nightjar and of the Samoan Triller.
Following his tropical work, Dhondt headed to a faculty position at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. There his long-term studies of Eurasian Blue Tits and Great Tits led to ground-breaking discoveries documenting competition between species at a time when he says almost nobody believed competition was an important aspect of birdlife. These long-term studies were also fundamental for studies of mating systems and dispersal behavior in birds.
Dhondt came to Cornell in 1994 as the very first Edwin H. Morgens Professor of Ornithology. He set up shop in one of several trailers that made up the ever-expanding Lab of Ornithology footprint in Sapsucker Woods. During the ensuing decades, says lab executive director emeritus, John Fitzpatrick, Dhondt was an “intellectual powerhouse.”
Dhondt’s academic career encompassed a range of topics including social behavior, habitat fragmentation, life-history trade-offs, disease ecology, population demography, evolutionary ecology, and conservation among others.
At the Lab of Ornithology, Dhondt was a pioneer in the field of avian disease ecology. Dhondt led interdisciplinary research collaborations funded by National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation to understand the mechanisms causing a House Finch eye disease epidemic, leading to what the American Ornithological Society calls “one of the best-studied models of disease dynamics.” Dhondt harnessed the power of participatory scientists to monitor disease in House Finches that continues today with the lab’s FeederWatch program.
Dhondt also helped develop two participatory science projects early in his time at the lab—Project Tanager and Birds in Forested Landscapes—to study the effects of habitat fragmentation across North America. Both projects increased the understanding of the impacts of fragmentation and led to the publication of seminal works in Conservation Biology and the Journal of Applied Ecology.
“His influence on the Lab of Ornithology’s studies of bird populations during the 1990s and early 2000s was profound,” says Fitzpatrick. “His groundbreaking research on avian disease opened up an entirely new arena in evolutionary ecology.”
Dhondt has authored more than 325 peer-reviewed articles in highly regarded journals including Science and Nature. His contributions to ornithology were formally recognized by the American Ornithological Society with the prestigious Elliott Coues Award for outstanding and innovative research in 2020.
Dhondt’s contribution to ornithology did not stop at research. Over his career Dhondt served as the primary advisor for more than 35 doctoral students and served on countless committees to help train and inspire the next generation. Dhondt was also the Alice Cook House Dean for six years, service that he was particularly proud of.
Former student Dana Hawley, now a biology professor at Virginia Tech, remembers Dhondt’s unwavering support. “André believed in me as a scientist from the very beginning, even when I doubted myself,” says Hawley. “He was always great fun to talk ideas and science with, and he treated me (a beginning graduate student) as an intellectual equal in our discussions. I would not be the scientist that I am today without having had André as a mentor who both supported me and challenged me to rise to my full potential.”
Dhondt even influenced Ian Owens, executive director of the Lab of Ornithology, when Owens was a young student. “I vividly remember the debates that André stimulated when he visited my university,” said Owens. “He encouraged us to think for ourselves and he made us believe our views were important. He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of the literature. It was an intellectually exciting week for a young graduate student, and one that had a big influence on me. When I arrived at Cornell, I realized that was very much how André worked, and he has had a lasting impact on generations of Cornell students.”
Despite his long tenure here and overseas, Dhondt says it doesn’t seem that long because “I just keep doing things.” And he says he enjoys it all--everything but the administrative work and the time spent in meetings, that is!
“I’m a hard-core researcher and I’m a field guy. I like to do my own research and translate ideas into experiments,” says Dhondt. “I also really like to teach. I’m the third-generation teacher in my family. When you finish a class, you feel high after it. There’s so much energy. The goal should be to train students to be better than you.”
Dhondt shows no signs of slowing down. He’s been hard at work with colleagues around the world to update and revise his university textbook called Interspecific Competition in Birds. “This book,” writes Jan Ekman in a review of the book published in the Auk, “is a rich source of inspiration for anyone interested in competition and how the presence of competitors is manifested in the daily life of birds.”
Ithaca will remain home base for Dhondt and his wife Keila (who works in the Cornell Vet School), with their six adult children scattered all over the world.
Considering the many, many students Dhondt has taught over the years, the ripple effect of his research and mentorship will continue to spread around the world and cement his legacy for the future of birds and people.
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