Anthony Hemingway “Tony” Bledsoe died at the age of 62 on September 14, 2019. Tony was an outstanding ornithologist, life-long birdwatcher, and most of all an inspirational teacher of ecology and evolution. He was an Elective Member (1990) of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU), Director of the Ornithological Societies of North America (1998–2000), Assistant to the AOU Treasurer (1996–2000), a key organizer of the AOU’s annual meeting in Pittsburgh (1989), and a founding member of the Connecticut Ornithological Association (1983). Tony was born to Carter and Phyllis Bledsoe in Washington, D.C., on October 10, 1956, but grew up on the Main Line of Philadelphia, graduating from Lower Merion High School. As a young natural history enthusiast, he volunteered to work in the collections at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, where he was inspired to “think clearly” about evolutionary issues by Frank Gill and herpetologist Tom Uzzell. Following high school, Tony attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he honed his birdwatching and natural history skills. In 1978, he started his PhD studies in the laboratory of Charles Sibley at Yale University. At the time molecular systematics was a small field, and studies using DNA were rare. With huge intellectual curiosity and boyish naiveté, Tony jumped into the program and soon became an expert in all aspects of phylogenetics. At the time, cladistic morphology was in its full glory, and antipathy toward Sibley’s DNA hybridization, which was viewed (inaccurately) as phenetic and thus hopelessly flawed, led to epic philosophical battles. Tony threw his substantial intellectual powers into those battles and helped guide the Sibley school through much of the fray. Tony’s graduate studies were focused on the adaptive radiation of 9-primaried oscines. It seems quaint today, but he spent many years obtaining DNA-hybridization comparisons of just 27 bird species. Nevertheless, literally everything he discovered about the relationships of those birds (e.g., the radical observation that South American “emberizids” clustered with tanagers rather than sparrows) has endured the test of time and been confirmed by modern DNA sequencing studies. In the process of his PhD studies, Tony became an expert in what we now call genomics. DNA hybridization compared large segments of bird DNA (the “single-copy” genome) and required a substantial understanding of genomic structure and data analysis. In 1984, Tony finished his PhD and began a series of postdocs, first as a Guyer Fellow at the University of Wisconsin (1985–1986), then as a Rea Fellow at the Carnegie

中文翻译：

---

安东尼·海明威·布莱索，1956–2019

安东尼·海明威“托尼”布莱索于 2019 年 9 月 14 日去世，享年 62 岁。托尼是一位杰出的鸟类学家、终生的观鸟者，最重要的是是一位鼓舞人心的生态学和进化老师。他是美国鸟类学家联盟 (AOU) 的选举成员 (1990)、北美鸟类学会理事 (1998-2000)、AOU 财务主管助理 (1996-2000)、AOU 年度的主要组织者匹兹堡会议（1989 年），康涅狄格州鸟类协会的创始成员（1983 年）。托尼 (Tony) 于 1956 年 10 月 10 日出生在华盛顿特区的卡特 (Carter) 和菲利斯·布莱索 (Phyllis Bledsoe)，但在费城主干线上长大，毕业于下梅里恩高中。作为一名年轻的自然历史爱好者，他自愿在费城自然科学学院的收藏工作，在那里，弗兰克·吉尔和爬虫学家汤姆·乌泽尔启发他“清楚地思考”进化问题。高中毕业后，托尼就读于加州大学圣克鲁斯分校，在那里他磨练了自己的观鸟和自然历史技能。1978年，他在耶鲁大学Charles Sibley的实验室开始攻读博士学位。当时分子系统学是一个小领域，使用 DNA 的研究很少见。凭借巨大的求知欲和孩子气的天真，托尼加入了该计划，并很快成为系统发育学各个方面的专家。当时，分支形态学正处于鼎盛时期，对 Sibley 的 DNA 杂交的反感，被（不准确地）认为是表象，因此是无可救药的缺陷，导致了史诗般的哲学斗争。托尼将他强大的智力投入到这些战斗中，并帮助指导 Sibley 学校度过了大部分的纷争。托尼的研究生学习专注于 9 原色 oscines 的适应性辐射。今天看起来很古怪，但他花了很多年时间才对 27 种鸟类进行 DNA 杂交比较。然而，实际上他发现的关于这些鸟类关系的一切（例如，南美“emberizids”与唐雀而非麻雀聚集在一起的激进观察）都经受住了时间的考验，并得到了现代 DNA 测序研究的证实。在他攻读博士学位的过程中，托尼成为了我们现在称之为基因组学的专家。DNA 杂交比较了鸟类 DNA 的大片段（“单拷贝”基因组），需要对基因组结构和数据分析有深入的了解。