Birds provide ecological services by transporting pollen and seeds, but they can also transmit diseases such as avian flu, so it is important to learn how sites they visit are connected geographically. Do healthy birds travel longer distances than sick ones? Do they stop to rest less often when migrating? Are they more or less sociable?
The answers to these basic questions used to be beyond reach, but we now have electronic tags to report on the routes taken by birds and the distances separating their breeding and winter locations to establish patterns of connectivity. Like most of MCB's research projects, those projects focusing on connectivity draw from multiple MCB research priorities. MCB scientists Alex Jahn, Geoffrey Brown, and Dan Becker are working on projects in this sector.