Research
Mexican Bird Resurvey Project
In the 1930s, Robert T. Moore—explorer, poet, and ornithologist—set out to describe the birds of Mexico. By 1955, his trusted field hand Chester C. Lamb had collected 39,000 specimens from over 300 locations. After Moore died, the collection remained preserved, its wealth of knowledge waiting to be examined. Meanwhile, the habitats Lamb visited were forever altered. In 2017, the Moore Lab began revisiting Lamb’s site to see how human impacts changed the landscape and its birdlife.
FLAPP: Free-Flying Los Angeles Parrot Project
Flocks of parrots are now a regular sight in Los Angeles, but it was not always this way. Parrots were brought to the city as pets starting in the late 1800s. Some escaped, others were released. By the 1960s, wild populations of a few species were established and began to grow. FLAPP uses community science and DNA to understand how our new parrot neighbors are interacting and evolving in their urban habitat.
oBird: 3D Bird Models
Natural history collections are vital sources of knowledge about biodiversity, but their information is often difficult to access. Our oBird project seeks to bring museum specimens to the public and research community through 3D modeling.
Recent Publications by the Moore Lab
WLE Tsai, ME Schedl, JM Maley & JE McCormack. 2019. More than skin and bones: Comparing extraction methods and alternative sources of DNA from avian museum specimens. Molecular Ecology Resources. In press
DA DeRaad JM Maley, WLE Tsai & JE McCormack. 2019. Phenotypic clines across an unstudied hybrid zone in Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma woodhouseii). The Auk: Ornithological Advances 136: 1-11
WLE Tsai, C Mota-Vargas, O Rojas-Soto, R Bhowmik, EY Liang, JM Maley, E Zarza & JE McCormack. 2019. Museum genomics reveals the speciation history of Dendrortyx wood-partridges in the Mesoamerican highlands. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 136: 29-34
MX Venkatraman, DA Deraad, WLE Tsai, E Zarza,AJ Zellmer, JM Maley & JE McCormack. 2019. Cloudy with a chance of speciation: integrative taxonomy reveals extraordinary divergence within a Mesoamerican cloud forest bird. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society: 126: 1-15
Publications Using Moore Lab Specimens
RD Tovilla‐Sierra, L Herrera‐Alsina, R Bribiesca & HT Arita. 2019. The spatial analysis of biological interactions: morphological variation responding to the co‐occurrence of competitors and resources. Journal of Avian Biology. In press
JM Crumsey, JB Searle & JP Sparks. 2019. Isotope values of California vole (Microtus californicus) hair relate to historical drought and land use patterns in California, USA. Oecologia 190: 769-781
K Riemer, RP Guralnick & EP White. 2018. No general relationship between mass and temperature in endothermic species. eLife 7: e27166
DW Steadman & J Franklin. 2017. Origin, paleoecology, and extirpation of bluebirds and crossbills in the Bahamas across the last glacial–interglacial transition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114: 9924-9929
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