Collaborations, side projects, and eagles

Well this has been an exciting and busy few weeks. On the non-dissertation research side of things, I completed the lab work for the Oklahoma black bear genetic evaluation and it has been turned over to ODWC for analysis, I am just about to complete sexing 130 golden eagles for a collaborator, and Ron and I just entered into a collaboration with the FWS and New Mexico State University on Cooper's Hawk genomics!!! We will be sequencing the Cooper's Hawk genome and doing a population genomics analysis. I am thrilled to have another raptor genomics project to work on.

My dissertation research is coming along nicely as well. We finalized the SNP chip design and have ~88,000 SNPs to analyze bald and golden eagles with. We have 480 chips in production and I am working to obtain the last of the DNA samples I will need before I ship off the 480 samples to be run on the SNP chips, so I can begin analyses this fall. We are also working on a collaboration with individuals that have historical samples and will be obtaining hatchling samples from bald eagles from Yellowstone. We will be using our SNP chips to do a population genomics study of their population which will be interesting to compare to my study as their population was a source population for many of the reintroductions as compared to some of my populations which were sinks during the bottleneck.

I was honored to receive OSU's Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, but I did not get a fellowship big enough to put me on an RA this year. I will be TAing Human Heredity with Dr. Meredith Hamilton in the fall.

At the aviary, we are working on receiving some new education birds from a local facility that had their funding cut. I am very excited to be able to expand our education program. I am currently working on hiring an education specialist to run the program!!!! I am eager to hire someone that has a background in education shows and I am hoping having someone run the program will be a little stress off of my plate. The GSEH was also featured in the magazine Indian Gaming. You can view the article by clicking on the picture.

Finally, I have spent a ton of time this summer reading the PEIS and scientific proposal for the 30 year take issue for eagles. I would love to discuss why I am pro having this pass with anyone that will listen. Of course, I do have reservations about a few things like self-reporting and protection for both species so they do not end up being listed under the ESA, but I think the bigger problem is having non-permitted facilities (i.e. they do not have to pay mitigation, do pre/post site assessments, report, etc) since the facilities are not required to get the take permits in the first place. So, if they are not getting the permits, does a long-term tenure even matter? I think if there is not a compromise with industry soon they will just choose to not get the permit and then we will be in a major conservation problem.

#CoopersHawk #SNPchip #Fellowships #GreySnowEagleHouse