Joanna Burger began studying breeding shorebirds and migrant gulls on her parents’ farm along the Mohawk River at Niskayuna, NY. She received her B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Albany (1963), her M.S. from Cornell University (1964), and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota (1972) under H. B. Tordoff, and continued her postdoctoral work by studying Black-headed Gulls under N. Tinbergen at Ravenglass, England, and Laughing Gulls under C. Beer at Brigantine, NJ (1973–1974). She studied different aspects of the breeding biology and behavior of Laughing Gulls for 20 years in Barnegat Bay, NJ (1976–1995) and for several years at Culebra, Puerto Rico, and has studied the foraging behavior of Laughing Gulls in New Jersey, New York, Florida, Texas, Mexico, and Puerto Rico with her husband, Michael Gochfeld. She has been particularly interested in the relationship between Laughing Gulls, Herring Gulls, and people on the breeding and foraging grounds. She has studied the breeding biology, habitat selection, and environmental contamination of gulls, terns, skimmers, and other seabirds on most continents. She has edited 3 volumes on the behavior of seabirds, a book on interactions among marine organisms and seabirds, and a book on the ecological aftermath of the Arthur Kill oil spill. She has written A Naturalist Along the Jersey Shore (Rutgers University Press, 1996) and, with Michael Gochfeld, The Black Skimmer: Social Dynamics of a Colonial Species (1990) and The Common Tern: Its Breeding Biology and Social Behavior (1991), both published by Columbia University Press. She has taught ecology, behavior, and ecological risk at Rutgers University since 1973, served as director of the Ecology and Evolution Graduate Program for 14 years, and is a professor of biological sciences. She is a member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Current address: Nelson Biological Laboratories, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855–1059. E-mail: burger@biology.rutgers.edu.
