Richard L. Zusi, 1930–2024

[Susan Elbin]

Ornithology, Volume 141, Issue 3, 1 July 2024, ukae014, https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithology/ukae014

Published: 04 May 2024

Richard (Dick) L. Zusi, Emeritus Curator of Birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), died on January 15, 2024, in Olympia, Washington, just days shy of his 94th birthday. He was born on January 27, 1930, in Winchester, Massachusetts, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario. As a young person, Dick became fascinated with birds, not only by their beauty but also by their diversity and behavior. According to his comments, I believe Dick’s interest in birds from an esthetic point of view informed his life’s ornithological achievements as much as his more scholarly and scientific interests. He was an Elective Member (1962) and a Fellow (1971) of the American Ornithologists’ Union (now the American Ornithological Society).

Dick completed his undergraduate work at Northwestern University (BA 1951) and earned MS (1953) and PhD (1959) degrees in zoology at the University of Michigan. From 1958 to 1963, he taught at the University of Maine. His role as curator and research scientist in the NMNH’s Division of Birds extended from 1963 until his retirement in 1994. As an Emeritus, he continued his research for another decade, producing two of his most significant and comprehensive publications. At the age of 80, he retired from research and relocated to Portland, Oregon, with his wife Luvia from their long-time residence in Bethesda, Maryland. After Luvia died in 2021, Dick relocated to Olympia.

Dick was principally a functional anatomist, focusing on structural adaptations for food procurement in the avian skull, but he also published in ecology and systematics. His PhD dissertation under Robert Storer addressed such adaptations in the head and neck of the Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger). Many of his publications also displayed his exceptional talent as an illustrator of bones and musculature. Four classic papers on the avian skull exemplify his excellence as both a scientist and an illustrator (Zusi 1964, 1984, 1987, 1993).

Zusi’s pre- and post-retirement collaboration with the late Bradley C. Livezey (Carnegie Museum of Natural History) drew on their combined knowledge of comparative morphology to develop a higher-order phylogenetic analysis of the class Aves. This collaboration resulted in 2 major and widely cited publications in the NetherlandsJournal of Zoology and the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (Livezey and Zusi 2001, 2007).

Dick always had a keen interest in hummingbirds (Trochilidae). He studied pollination behavior of several species in the field and collected specimens in Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Dominica. After the Livezey collaboration, he devoted most of his active retirement research time to detailed studies of the hummingbird skeleton. This culminated in his final publication, a 2013 treatise in Ornithological Monographs addressing both functional and phylogenetic aspects of the Trochilidae skeleton (Zusi 2013).

In his later research years, when molecular genetics was rapidly overtaking comparative anatomy as the basis for establishing phylogenetic relationships, I believe Dick had some regrets about being behind that curve. At the time Mike Braun, director of the museum’s genetics laboratory, was working on a collaborative molecular phylogeny of all families and orders of living birds. He came to Dick one day with his surprising revelation that the owlet-nightjars (Aegothelidae) appeared to be a sister group to the hummingbirds and swifts. Dick was overjoyed to hear this and told Mike, “I’d say you just made my day!” It turned out that for years he had suspected such a relationship, but had just not been able to find conclusive evidence in the morphology to nail it down. Instead of wanting to piggyback his morphological analyses on the molecular data, he encouraged Mike to “please publish that right away,” so he would have justification to use owlet-nightjars in polarizing hummingbird character states (M. Braun, personal communication). I think this corroboration was an important vindicating moment for him, and he was indeed gratified later to see that the phylogeny he later published with Livezey, based on morphology, was borne out almost in its entirety by phylogeny based on molecular genetic analysis.

Throughout his career Dick was a staunch advocate for maintaining and expanding museum specimen collections. As a curator, he oversaw the growth of the Bird Division’s avian skeleton and fluid-preserved anatomical collections, which now rank among the most complete in the world. Long before computer catalogs of museum collections were completed, he helped organize and execute a global inventory of holdings of avian skeletons and fluid-preserved specimens. This database has proven to be an indispensable resource for ornithologists studying avian anatomy.

His imprint on the public side of the NMNH can still be seen in the display cases in the Bones Hall. Dick was the curator responsible for ornithological content when the Bones Hall was developed in the 1960s. The resulting classic displays are a tribute not only to Dick’s interest in the function of the skeleton but also to his ability to translate complex anatomical concepts for public consumption. In addition to his work with public museum displays, Dick was the principal curator of the widely anticipated and successful Roger Tory Peterson Exhibition, which was displayed from April to September 1984. For his long, productive research career and his curatorial work at the NMNH, Dick was elected to the Hall of Fame of the Bird Division.

His soft-spoken and considerate manner, well-adjusted ego, and extraordinarily dry wit made him a popular person among his friends and colleagues. He frequently invited his post-doctoral students, visiting scientists, and other colleagues to his home for dinner. Dick was in many ways a Renaissance man with a deep appreciation of art, music, and science. His broad interests, to name a few, included jazz and classical music (after a couple of scotches, he felt fortified enough to play a Mozart sonata at one of his parties!), artistic cinema, off-beat PBS comedies (e.g., Fawlty Towers), birding (every year we would enjoy both Christmas Bird Counts and May “big days”), gardening, and tennis. A long-time tradition with myself was playing tennis at dawn before returning home to enjoy “Breakfast at Wimbledon” or the French Open, catered by Luvia’s wonderful culinary creations.

Dick Zusi will be greatly missed by his many friends and colleagues. He is survived by his three children, David, Allison, and Victoria, as well as many grandchildren. I am grateful to Helen James, Michael Braun, Matthew Perry, and Michael Hamas for contributing information for this memorial essay.

Memorials Editor: Ted Anderson, tanderson@americanornithology.org

LITERATURE CITED

Livezey, B. C.  and R. L. Zusi (2001). Higher-order phylogenetics of modern aves based on comparative anatomy. Netherlands Journal of Zoology 51:179–205.

Livezey, B. C. , and R. L. Zusi (2007).Higher-order phylogeny of modern birds (Theropoda, Aves: Neornithes) based on comparative anatomy. II. Analysis and discussion. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 149:1-95.

Zusi, R. L. (1987). A feeding adaptation of the jaw articulation in New World jays (Corvidae). The Auk 104:665–680.

Zusi, R. L. (1993) Patterns of diversity in the avian skull. In The Skull, 2: Patterns of Structural and Systematic Diversity (J. Hanken and B. K. Hall, Editors). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA. pp. 391–437.

Zusi, R. L. (2013). Introduction to the Skeleton of Hummingbirds (Aves: Apodiformes, Trochilidae) in Functional and Phylogenetic Contexts. Ornithological Monographs, No. 77. American Ornithologists’ Union, Washington, D.C., USA.