Bonnie Bowen

515-294-6391, Fax 515-294-7874
bsbowen@iastate.edu

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~bsbowen/

B.S., Cornell University, 1972
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1978

Research

Dr. Bowen's research interests lie at the interface of behavior, ecology, evolution, and genetics. She is interested in the ways that ecology and behavior affect evolutionary processes and genetic structure in natural populations. She has studied the relationship between demography and evolutionary processes in a natural population of mammals, genetic and ecological aspects of the evolution of communal nesting behavior in birds, and the relationship between land use practices and reproductive success in grassland nesting birds. She is continuing her research on communally nesting birds with a study of genetic structure of populations of Mexican jays living on "sky islands" in Arizona. She is using several molecular genetic techniques, including allozymes and microsatellite DNA, to assess genetic structure. Dr. Bowen is also using molecular genetic techniques to examine the genetic structure of populations of freshwater mussels, a group of animals that has suffered large-scale population declines in recent years. She is using mitochondrial DNA sequence variation to study population differences in this important group of organisms.

Publications

Bowen, B. S. 2002. Groove-billed Ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris). In The Birds of North America, No. 612 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

Koford, R. R., B. S. Bowen, J. T. Lokemoen, and Arnold D. Kruse. 2000. Cowbird parasitism in grassland and cropland in the northern Great Plains. Pp. 229-235 in J. N. M. Smith et al., eds., Ecology and management of cowbirds and their hosts, University of Texas Press.

Kruse, A. D., and B. S. Bowen. 1996. Effects of burning and grazing on nesting waterfowl in North Dakota. J. Wildl. Manage. 60:233-246.

Bowen, B. S., R. R. Koford, and J. L. Brown. 1995. Genetic evidence for undetected alleles and unexpected parentage in the gray-breasted jay. Condor 97:503-511.