Frances Crews James (born September 29, 1930) is an American

ecologist Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

who served as a Professor of Biological Sciences at Florida State University. James studied geographic variation in the size and shape of birds, leading to transplant experiments with red-winged blackbirds and to tests of the theoretical assumptions underlying selection models. She is a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

. James, originally from

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

, was immersed in the stream of biology at an early age being involved in the

Academy of Natural Sciences The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading natu ...

Expeditions for Everyone. In 1984 James was the first woman to become president of the

American Ornithologists Union The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

serving for two years until 1986. She was awarded the

Eminent Ecologist Award The Eminent Ecologist Award is prize awarded annually to a senior ecologist in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the science of ecology. The prize is awarded by the Ecological Society of America. According to the statutes, the recipient ...

in January 1997; in the same year she also received the Outstanding Leadership Award from the

American Institute of Biological Sciences The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) is a nonprofit scientific charity. The organization’s mission is to promote the use of science to inform decision-making and advance biology for the benefit of science and society. Overvi ...

. She was awarded the 1999

Margaret Morse Nice Medal The Margaret Morse Nice Medal is an ornithological award made annually by the Wilson Ornithological Society (WOS). It was established in 1997 and named in honour of ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974). The medal recipient is expected ...

by the

Wilson Ornithological Society The Wilson Ornithological Society (WOS) is an ornithological organization that was formally established in 1886 as the Wilson Ornithological Chapter of the Agassiz Association. It is based at the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor ...

. She has served on

The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in 1951, The Natu ...

Board of Governors and the Board of Directors for the

World Wildlife Fund The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wor ...

Academic career

James completed her A.B. (Bachelor of Arts) in zoology at

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United State ...

and went on to do her M.S. (Master of Science) at

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

. She then finished her Ph.D. in

Zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

from the

University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...

in 1970 at the age of 40 after raising a family of three daughters with her then husband ornithologist Douglas A. James. Her dissertation involved observing patterns of intraspecific size variation in 12 species of birds found in areas of the United States. James looked specifically at

Bergmann’s rule Bergmann's rule is an ecogeographical rule that states that within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, while populations and species of smaller size are found in warmer ...

hypothesizing that temperature may not be the most important factor determining body size patterns across gradients. In 1996 Frances James and her colleague at the University of Florida, statistician Charles McCulloch published an article titled: New Approaches to Population Trends in Land Birds.
They proposed novel approaches to analyzing the data from the Breeding Bird Survey, data showed no general decline but significant declines in species from certain regions. In 2009, with John Pourtless, she published an Ornithological Monograph entitled "Cladistics and the Origin of Birds: A Review and Two New Analyses". In this monograph they argue that both the “early-

archosaur Archosauria () is a clade of diapsids, with birds and crocodilians as the only living representatives. Archosaurs are broadly classified as reptiles, in the cladistic sense of the term which includes birds. Extinct archosaurs include non-avi ...

” and “

crocodylomorph Crocodylomorpha is a group of pseudosuchian archosaurs that includes the crocodilians and their extinct relatives. They were the only members of Pseudosuchia to survive the end-Triassic extinction. During Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times, cro ...

” hypotheses are at least as well supported as the BMT (birds are

maniraptoran Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the non-avian dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to ''Ornithomimus velox''. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Deinonychosauria, Oviraptoros ...

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally ...

dinosaurs) hypothesis. Also, the Kishino-Hasegawa tests they performed revealed no statistical difference between the hypothesis that

birds Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

were a clade nested within the

Maniraptora Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the non-avian dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to '' Ornithomimus velox''. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Deinonychosauria, Ovirapt ...

and the hypothesis that core clades of Maniraptora (

oviraptorosaur Oviraptorosaurs ("egg thief lizards") are a group of feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period of what are now Asia and North America. They are distinct for their characteristically short, beaked, parrot-like skulls, with or w ...

troodontid Troodontidae is a clade of bird-like theropod dinosaurs. During most of the 20th century, troodontid fossils were few and incomplete and they have therefore been allied, at various times, with many dinosaurian lineages. More recent fossil disco ...

s, and

dromaeosaur Dromaeosauridae () is a family of feathered theropod dinosaurs. They were generally small to medium-sized feathered carnivores that flourished in the Cretaceous Period. The name Dromaeosauridae means 'running lizards', from Greek ('), meaning ...

s) were actually flying and flightless radiations within the clade bracketed by ''

Archaeopteryx ''Archaeopteryx'' (; ), sometimes referred to by its German name, "" ( ''Primeval Bird''), is a genus of bird-like dinosaurs. The name derives from the ancient Greek (''archaīos''), meaning "ancient", and (''ptéryx''), meaning "feather" ...

'' and modern birds (Aves). James and Pourtless concluded that because Aves might not belong within it,

Theropoda Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally ca ...

as presently constituted might not be monophyletic. They further cautioned that a verificationist approach in the BMT literature may be producing misleading studies on the origin of birds.

References

External links

Florida State University faculty profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:James, Frances Florida State University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1930 births Living people Fellows of the Ecological Society of America American women biologists American ornithologists Mount Holyoke College alumni Louisiana State University alumni University of Arkansas alumni American women academics 21st-century American women scientists