Welcome to Angelo Capparella's Website

Biographical Profile:

Dr. Angelo P. Capparella, a Research Triangle native, earned a B.A. in Zoology and Geology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A. in Museum Science (Natural History) at Texas Tech University, and a Ph.D. in Zoology (Systematics & Evolutionary Biology) at Louisiana State University. His specialty is neotropical avian systematics and conservation biology.

Capparella's postdoctoral fellowship was in ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History. Prior to arriving at Illinois State University in 1988, he worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, the North Carolina State Museum of Natural History, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Union and a Research Associate of the Field Museum of Natural History.

Since 1977, Capparella has been exploring uninhabited regions of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean to gather data on the effect of river barriers to avian evolutionary development and to discover new bird species. (Fortunately, he has been involved in three discoveries to date.) Regions explored include Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru. The 1987 expedition to Peru has been chronicled in Don Stap's A PARROT WITHOUT A NAME (1991).

In the School of Biological Sciences Capparella teaches avian biology, systematic biology, human ecology, conservation biology, evolution, and other related courses. He is the Coordinator of the B.S. and M.S. Conservation Biology Sequences and Coordinator of the M.S./Ph.D. Biology GIS Graduate Certificate. He is the Curator of Vertebrates for the John Wesley Powell-Dale Birkenholz Natural History Collections (fish, amphibians, birds, mammals & reptiles).

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Angelo P. Capparella, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Zoology
Curator of Vertebrates

Coordinator, B.S. Conservation Biology Sequence
Coordinator, M.S. Conservation Biology Sequence
Coordinator, M.S./Ph.D. Biology GIS Graduate Certificate

Illinois State University
School of Biological Sciences
Normal, IL 61790-4120

Office Location: 419 SLB (Science Lab Building)
Phone: (309) 438-5124

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