A burst of whistles pierced the foggy morning in the Missouri Ozarks. It came from Marina Rodriguez’s Bluetooth speaker but sounded enough like a Yellow Warbler’s song to catch the attention of two males. They swooped down from the high canopy and landed simultaneously in a mist net that Rodriguez and her team had erected alongside the Current River.
Netting two birds at once is a rarity. “Kind of like Christmas,” said Rodriguez, a Ph.D. student at ColoradoState University. “I think we got two because they were fighting over territory. Each thought the other was making the sound.”
It was a promising start to the final stop in a two-week springtime tour. Rodriguez and three other students had been roaming the Midwest in a white Ram 1500 in search of breeding Yellow Warblers. In mosquito-thick Kansas, they had encountered tornadoes, hail, and long, unproductive stretches. Here they hoped for less drama and more birds.
The sky brightened over the coneflower- and moss-covered landscape. Rodriguez and an undergraduate popped the warblers into cloth bags and carried them to a makeshift research station on the truck bed. They banded the birds, measured their beaks, and took blood samples. Then they plucked two feathers from each.
It might not look like cutting-edge science, but the feathers Rodriguez collected would provide enough DNA to scan the warblers’ entire genome, a complete set of genetic material. The scientists could then translate that vast data source into a “genoscape,” a map of genetic variations across the species’ geographic range. That map, in turn, would offer insights into the birds’ migratory paths and their ability to adapt to threats along the way. Such detailed information was out of reach even five years ago.
THE TEAM HAD ENCOUNTERED TORNADOES AND HAIL. HERE THEY HOPED FOR LESS DRAMA AND MORE BIRDS.
As part of the Bird Genoscape Project, Rodriguez is collaborating with scientists across the Western Hemisphere. They are building on
