The American Ornithological Society (AOS) annually confers achievement awards on individuals and groups for their ornithological research and considerable contributions to the science and practice of ornithology, and for their service to the scientific society.
Professor Ben Hatchwell will receive the Elliott Coues Award. The Elliott Coues Award recognises outstanding and innovative contributions to ornithological research with no limitation to geographic area, sub-discipline(s) of ornithology, or the time course over which the work was done.
Dr. Ben Hatchwell studied zoology at the University of Oxford (1984) and obtained a Ph.D. at the ¾«¶«Ó°Òµ (1988) on guillemot population biology on Skomer Island. After post-docs at the University of Cambridge on accentor (Prunellidae) mating systems and back in Oxford on European blackbird population biology, he returned to ¾«¶«Ó°Òµas a lecturer (1993–present), becoming Professor of Evolutionary Ecology in 2007.
I am really delighted and honoured to be receiving the Elliott Coues Award from the American Ornithological Society. I was extremely fortunate to have some inspiring mentors and role-models as an early-career researcher, and since then have worked with many fantastic collaborators, post-docs, students and technicians, who have collectively made a massive contribution to the work that is recognised by this award. I am very grateful to all of them and the AOS.
Prof Ben Hatchwell
Hatchwell’s main contributions are in behavioural ecology, using observational and experimental field studies of individually marked birds to ask questions about social evolution. A key system in his career has been a long-term study of long-tailed tits just outside ¾«¶«Ó°Òµthat began in 1994 and is still running. Their simple cooperative breeding system is ideally suited for the dissection of the causes and consequences of sociality, the rules governing cooperative decisions, and the role of kin selection. Other projects on cooperative breeding include studies of sociable weavers in South Africa, rifleman in New Zealand, and comparative analyses of behaviour. He retains an interest in population biology, continuing to work on guillemots and an invasive population of monk parakeets.
Hatchwell has more than 160 publications; he has supervised 35 PhD students and mentored 20 post-doctoral researchers and research fellows. He was elected President of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (2016–18) and was awarded the ASAB Medal by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour in 2023 for his contribution to the field.
The 2025 recipients will accept their awards at the AOS annual meeting () in St. Louis, Missouri, in August.