People

Principal Investigator

Christopher J. Clark, PhD

Associate Professor of EEOB

cclark@ucr.edu

I mostly study hummingbirds, but this photo is from field work on Great Gray owl in Manitoba in February. -30 degree weather makes for great Beardsicles. We were studying how Great Gray owl hunts through snow.

Post-doc

Nadje Najar, PhD

Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow

nadje.a.najar@ucr.edu

Nadje studies hummingbird genomics, flight, and migration. She got her Ph.D. at the University of North Colorado under Dr. Lauryn Benedict, studying rock wren song and migration. Now she's helping us with the genomics of Allen's & Rufous Hummingbird courtship displays, and she's hoping to find the genes for migration in Allen's Hummingbirds.

PhD Students

Ayala Berger

ayala.berger@email.ucr.edu I am broadly interested in “beauty” and the evolution of elaborate traits. Specifically, I am interested in the intersections between animal signals, and in how the environment and other sources of selection shape signal evolution. My dissertation research is on Anna's and Costa's hummingbirds’ acoustic courtship displays. I am also passionate about outreach centered around natural history and the importance of open spaces.

Jenny Wong

j.wong@email.ucr.edu Jenny is interested in phylogenetics of bee hummingbirds. While hummingbirds (Trochilidae) as a whole have a high speciation rate, bee hummingbirds have the highest rate of species accumulation. As a recent and rapidly radiated species group, Jenny uses bee hummingbirds as a model to understand the role of introgressive hybridization in radiation by constructing a whole genome-based phylogenetic tree. Such phylogenetic trees will be useful as they provide a historical context for the similarities and differences between the species.Personal Website: https://www.jennywong.me

Sierra Winter

sierra.winter@email.ucr.edu Sierra is interested in researching how urbanization and climate change has affected the ranges and populations of hummingbirds that breed in the United States. Currently, she is developing species distribution models using citizen science data to see how future climate change scenarios will affect different species’ ranges. She is also conducting field research to track population trends of the two subspecies of Allen’s Hummingbird.

Soumyadeep Chatterjee

soumyadeep.chatterjee@email.ucr.edu Soumyadeep is studying evolution and behavior in bee hummingbirds - how vision tracks color through sexual and/or natural selection, looking particularly at opsin genes. All hummingbird photos are taken by Soumyadeep. You can find his bird photos at @avesmania_bird_shots on Instagram.

Mary Tucker

TBD