Our research program addresses two fundamental issues in evolutionary biology: 1) character evolution – how and why new characteristics such as behavior, coloration and morphology evolve, and 2) speciation – how separate lineages of organisms form. Birds and their plumage coloration serve as the model system that we use to study these questions using molecular phylogenetics, population genetics and coalescent approaches.

For a detailed description of our previous research see The Omland Lab

For a non-technical description of our research from the UMBC Magazine see
http://www.umbc.edu/magazine/fall09/discovery.html#oriole