About the Author(s)

Johanna K. Beam is currently (as of 2022) a PhD student in the Toews Lab at Penn State University. She got her B.A. from University of Colorado Boulder, where she studied speciation in meadowlarks and published her work in Ornithology, as well as wrote the species split proposal for Chihuahuan Meadowlark. Her interest in meadowlarks started when she found a new latitudinal record for the then-subspecies Sturnella magna lilianae in Colorado in 2015. She currently studies speciation in several bird genera, including warblers, kinglets, and chats, though meadowlarks will always hold a special place in her heart. Her email is: jkb6436@psu.edu.

At the time of revision, Levi A. Jaster was a graduate student in biology at Emporia State University in Kansas. Levi had been a field technician for a grassland bird study in western Kansas and led a research effort on Henslow's Sparrows and other grassland birds, including S. magna, in Missouri for his Master's thesis at ESU.

At the time of the revision, William E. Jensen was an assistant professor in biology at ESU and had been involved with numerous grassland bird (including S. magna) studies in the south-central Great Plains. Email: wjensen1@emporia.edu.

Wesley E. Lanyon began his career as a birdwatcher in New Hampshire. He has a B.A. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin for his four-year study of the comparative behavior and ecology of Eastern and Western meadowlarks in the north-central states. After brief periods of teaching at the University of Arizona and Miami University (Ohio), he served on the curatorial staff of the American Museum of Natural History for 31 years, retiring in 1988. During this tenure he also served as resident director of the museum's Kalbfleisch Field Research Station on Long Island, where he was able to continue his meadowlark research with a 12-year program of breeding and hybridizing meadowlarks in captivity. He is a fellow and past president of the American Ornithologists' Union and a recipient of the AOU's Brewster Medal, given in part for his meadowlark research.