Department News

Nancy Chen Seeks to Understand an Endangered Species, Bird by Bird

September 27, 2019

According to a recent analysis published in the journal Science, the number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by nearly 3 billion—a shocking 29 percent of the total—since 1970. The study paints a bleak picture of avian loss among not only endangered species, but supposedly abundant birds like sparrows, and raises questions fundamental to evolutionary biology: What are the genes that influence survival and reproduction? What happens to the genetics of a population when it becomes threatened by extinction? Why do some individuals fare better than others? How do natural populations evolve over short time-scales?