What DNA Tells Us About the Evolution of Birds
Over the thirty years I have been sequencing the DNA of birds to learn about their evolutionary history, I have been witness to amazing technological advances that have revolutionized our understanding bird evolution. Genomic studies have resolved the phylogenetic relationships of the major lineages of birds, revealing many surprises in the avian tree of life and reordering the classifications of many bird families, genera, and species. New knowledge of avian genomes also has revealed the genetic basis of adaptive traits and the process of speciation. I will tell the story of how far we have come in this line of research and highlight some of the impressive recent work of my fellow molecular ornithologists.
Jeremy Kirchman is the Curator of Birds and Mammals at the New York State Museum in Albany, New York. He is an ornithologist whose research has focused on population genetics, biogeography, and systematics in a wide variety of birds. Jeremy received his BA at Illinois Wesleyan University and his MS in zoology at Louisiana State University, where he first became interested in museum specimen collections. He worked at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and was a Graduate Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. He received his PhD at the University of Florida in 2006. His work at the New York State Museum has focused on the continued growth of the ornithology collection, renovation of the Birds of New York exhibit gallery, mentorship of high school, college, and graduate students, and research on the genetics of boreal forest birds that breed in the Catskills and Adirondacks.