The Whitney South Seas Expedition (1920-c.1932) to collect bird specimens for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), under the initial leadership of Rollo Beck, was financed by Harry Payne Whitney, a thoroughbred horse-breeder and philanthropist. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Rollo Howard Beck (1870 - 1950) was a US ornithologist and explorer. ... Harry Payne Whitney was a businessman, horsebreeder and the husband of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. ... Thoroughbred race horses The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known as a race horse. ... A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, or reputation to a charitable cause. ...

Beck, an expert bird collector himself, hired Ernst H. Quayle and Charles Curtis to assist with collecting, including the botanical specimens collected by the expedition.

The expedition visited islands in the south Pacific region and eventually returned with over 40,000 bird specimens, many plant specimens and an extensive collection of anthropological items and photographs. In the course of the expedition Beck sealed the extinction of the already critically endangered Guadalupe Caracara by shooting nine out of eleven birds seen, almost all of the small population of the species remaining. For other meanings of Pacific, see Pacific (disambiguation). ... who cares though]] island species, have also lost the ability to fly. ... Anthropology (from Greek: ἀνθρωπος, anthropos, human being; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is the study of humanity. ... Binomial name Polyborus lutosus (Ridgway, 1876) The Guadalupe Caracara (Polyborus lutosus) is an extinct member of the raptor family of birds. ...

Using the sailing ship France, with many different scientists and collectors participating, over more than a dozen years, the expedition visited thousands of islands. It was administered by a committee at the AMNH and became a focus for attracting funds for research on the biota of the Pacific islands.

Ernst Mayr replaced Beck as leader on one of the later stages of the expedition, to the Solomon Islands in 1929-1930, and from 1932 to 1953 was Associate Curator, and then Curator, of the Whitney-Rothschild Collection of bird specimens at the AMNH. This article has been identified as possibly containing errors. ...

References

• Chapman, Frank M. (1935). The Whitney South Sea Expedition. Science 81: 95-97.
• Murphy, R.C. (1922). Science 56: 701-704.

External links

• The Pacific Voyages of Rollo Beck
• Whitney South Seas Expedition