Bird Migration

MSI PI Keith Barker (associate professor, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Curator of Genetic Resources Collection, Bell Museum) appeared on a recent edition of WCCO-TV’s regular feature, Good Question. The question was, “How do birds know when to migrate?” Professor Barker explained the internal clocks and local environmental conditions that cause different bird species to migrate. You can watch the story on the WCCO-TV website: Good Question: How do birds know when to migrate?

Professor Barker uses MSI for genomic analyses of bird species, analyses of patterns of global raptor community diversity, and comparative transcriptomics of birds on an urban-rural gradient, including assembling and annotating a draft reference genome and analyzing RNA-seq data for four species of birds.