Speciation in high-Andean hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are one of the most species-rich families of birds. This makes them an intriguing group to investigate how species form.
In collaboration with Dr. Chris Witt at the Museum of Southwestern Biology, I’ve been looking at how a group of Andean hummingbirds, the Sunbeams (genus Aglaeactis) have diversified. Using low-coverage (2-4X coverage) genomes, we’ve been able to gain new insights into how this group has formed multiple species in a very short evolutionary time frame.