Monthly Program – Bird Diversity Through Time

NOTE: This program will be presented via Zoom ONLY. The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology will NOT be open. Join the Zoom meeting at the start time.

Jessica A. Oswald Terrill, PhD: Bird diversity through time, and the role of humans in shaping the diversity and distributions of living species

Modern bird diversity and distributions have been shaped by climate and human impacts across the past few thousand years. Understanding the role of climate vs human driven change requires data from paleontological (pre-human), archaeological (human occupation), and modern contexts. I will present fossil data and genomic data from living and extinct bird species to answer questions centered on evaluating diversity change in tropical birds.

Jessica earned her PhD from the University of Florida, was a postdoc at Louisiana State University, and was research assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is currently a forensic ornithologist at The National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon.