Congratulations to Angela and her co-authors Kathryn and Staffan on the publication of a new paper in Biology Letters that documents the highly invasive malaria lineage SGS1 in our non-migratory chickadees in Boulder County. What this means for our local songbirds is unclear, but SGS1 has been implciated in population declines of house sparrows in Europe and it could be having negative impacts here in Colorado. This is the first time SGS1 has been documented in non-migratory wild birds in North America and it has only previously been documented in wild North American birds in a single tree swallow sampled in Quebec, Canada.
Check out this link for coverage of Angela's work in Audubon News!
Photo by Jeff Mitton.