Hi everyone,
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell Univeristy and a member of a large interdisciplinary group of researchers at the Lab of Ornithology studying House Finch-Mycoplasma gallisepticum dynamics (the notorious finch eye disease). I have worked on this project for five years, and have really enjoyed having an opportunity to work with great people at the Lab of Ornithology, motivated and resourceful citizen scientists, and of course House Finches.
My work has essentially focused on trying to understand the factors that drive the spread and maintenance of disease within and between finch populations. As you may guess, this requires gaining an understanding of finch ecology and behavior. In the course of this study, colleagues and I have banded thousands of House Finches and enlisted the aid of citizen scientitsts to help us track the spread and intensity of Mycoplasma infection (characterized by various levels of conjunctivitis severity) across the US.
Chris: Welcome to Expert Voices!
I am looking forward to hearing more about your research and find it interesting that citizen scientists from all over the country have contributed to this study. I encourage teachers who have participated to share their stories and am interested in hearing Chris’ stories about his research as well.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website has a lot of wonderful resources that make it easy to learn about birds and to study them in the classroom. I’ve added some of the links within their site on the right menu of this blog under “Bookmarks” and also included some other sites that have citizen science curricula and resources that can be found within NSDL.