Eugene Morton attended Denison University (BS), the University of the Pacific, Cornell University (MS) and completed his PhD at Yale University, with pre- and postdoctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Dr Morton was a Professor at the University of Maryland and a Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution until his retirement in 2005. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at York University in Toronto and Director of the Hemlock Hill Field Station near Cambridge Springs, PA, where students from the University of Maryland, Princeton University, York University and Allegheny College have pursued research for degrees. Dr Morton specializes in migratory bird behavioral ecology, mating systems in birds and saturniid moths, animal communication and avian/plant co-evolution. He has written or edited several books, including Animal Talk (1991) and The Smithsonian Book of Birds (1990) (both with Jake Page), Migrant Birds in the Neotropics (1982) and The Behavioral Ecology of Tropical Birds (2001, with Bridget Stutchbury).