Charles F. Thompson’s Website

The model system that our students use in the Avian Ecology Laboratory is a local population of the house wren (Troglodytes aedon), a migratory, cavity-nesting songbird that breeds on the ParkLands Merwin Preserve and adjacent property owned by the Sears and Butler families.

I received my B.A. and M.S. in zoology and Ph.D. in ecology and physiology from the Department of Zoology, Indiana University (dissertation advisor Val Nolan Jr.). After a post-doctoral research fellowship (advisor Carl W. Helms) and temporary assistant professorship in the Department of Zoology, University of Georgia, and a teaching post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Zoology, Miami University, I joined the faculty of the Department of Biology, State University of New York, Geneseo. I subsequently moved to the Department (now School) of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University. During my time at Illinois State, I have also spent sabbatical leaves at the Ecology Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Lower Hutt, New Zealand; the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and Wolfson College, University of Oxford; and the Ornithology Group, Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, University of Glasgow. To learn more how all this came about, click here. To learn more about the Avian Ecology Laboratory, click on the RESEARCH drop-down menu in the banner at the top of this page.