A University and Its Community

Ideas in Focus: Birds of a Feather




Baltimore is filled with people who think they're experts on Orioles and Ravens--you can hear them on sports-talk-radio shows every day, dissecting the nature of the hometown teams. But Kevin Omland, assistant professor of biological sciences, really is an expert on the nature of orioles and ravens--the fine-feathered, rather than big-muscled, species--and he certainly has landed in the right town.

Omland joined the UMBC faculty this year after completing a Smithsonian Fellowship in molecular evolution at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and his research focuses on using DNA data to trace the evolution of the Baltimore oriole and the California raven. Omland is using maternal mitochondrial DNA to prove the Baltimore bird is a distinct species that's evolved independently from the western Bullock's oriole during the last million years. In the future, he hopes to be able to reconstruct what the ancient ancestor of the Baltimore oriole looked like. (Was it cartoonish with a funny cap?) Omland, a nature lover as well as a scientist, also is using DNA sequence data to prove that the California raven (the one Baltimore claims as its own, through the lineage of Edgar Allan Poe) is also a species that has separately evolved from other U.S. ravens.

Omland is finding that there is a certain caché (and amused interest) in studying "dem birds" around here.

A University and Its Community Home