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Uniting museum collections with cutting-edge DNA technology.

The Moore Lab is the premier destination for undergraduates interested in birds. We offer students at Occidental College the opportunity to conduct hands-on research with birds while learning the skills that translate toward careers in environmental science, conservation, and basic research. We combine a vintage museum experience with cutting-edge DNA technologies in our Genomic Center to explore questions like how modern bird diversity arose on the landscape, the ecological and evolutionary processes driving the origin of new species, and how to conserve birds on a changing planet. Our focus on translatable skills means that students can transition to a wide variety of career paths in academia, government, or the private sector.

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Moore Lab Past & Present

The history of the Moore Laboratory of Zoology is as much a Los Angeles story as it is a story of the growth and use of museum collections.

The vast majority of our collection (60,000 specimens) is whole bird study skins. With 50,000 of these from Mexico, we are the largest Mexican bird collection in the world. We also have over 6,000 birds from Ecuador and sizeable holdings from Honduras (2,200), Guatemala (1,200) and Costa Rica (1,200).