Genetics of Migration – a case study of willow warblers
- Date: Feb 11, 2016
- Time: 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Staffan Bensch from Lund University, Sweden
- For more information, please check http://www.biology.lu.se/staffan-bensch
- Location: MPI Plön
- Room: Lecture hall
- Host: Miriam Liedvogel
AbstractIt is firmly established that the migratory program of naïve
song birds is hard-wired. But how a DNA sequence can make an
individual bird to keep flying slightly east of south rather than
any other southerly direction, for more than a month, crossing
deserts and oceans to finally reach a wintering area on another
continent, remains a major unsolved problem. The three subspecies
of the willow warbler with its sharp migratory divide in
Scandinavia, a wider migratory divide south of the Baltic Sea and
the gradual change of its migration pattern along its continues
distribution eastwards throughout Siberia is excellent model to
address these questions. I will present my long term research on
willow warblers that method-wise span from the time when mtDNA
sequencing and microsatellites were the standard techniques, to
our most recent results from genome resequencing.