UMBC Biological Sciences Department
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With more than 30 tenured and tenure-track faculty members and lecturers, UMBC’s Department of Biological Sciences is one of the university’s largest academic departments encompassing a wide breadth of research and teaching. Research faculty in the Biological Sciences focus on:
- Cell Biology
- Computational Biology
- Developmental Biology & Immunology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Molecular Biology & Genetics
- Neuroscience
- Plant Biology
Recent Submissions
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Conservation Biology of the Critically Endangered Bahama Oriole: Estimating Current Population Size and Evaluating Threats
The Bahamas and adjacent Caribbean islands are home to eight island endemic orioles, half of which are Threatened or Near Threatened. The Bahama Oriole (Icterus northropi) is listed by IUCN as Critically Endangered. ... -
Sex-role Reversal in Song. Females Sing More Frequently Than Males In the Streak-backed Oriole
(American Ornithological Society, 2008-03-31)Birds in which both sexes produce complex song are more common in the tropics than in the temperate north, where typically only males sing. Yet surprisingly little is known about female song characteristics in most tropical ... -
Sequencing of the complete mitochondrial genome of the common raven Corvus corax (Aves: Corvidae) confirms mitogenome-wide deep lineages and a paraphyletic relationship with the Chihuahuan raven C. cryptoleucus
(Public Library of Science, 2017-10-30)Previous studies based on single mitochondrial markers have shown that the common raven (Corvus corax) consists of two highly diverged lineages that are hypothesised to have undergone speciation reversal upon secondary ... -
Recent Speciation Between the Baltimore Oriole and The Black-backed Oriole
(The American Ornithologists’ Union, 2004-04-09)A recent phylogenetic survey of the New World orioles (genus Icterus; Omland et al. 1999) suggested that the Baltimore Oriole (I. galbula) and the Black-backed Oriole (I. abeillei) are sister taxa. That survey examined ... -
POPULATION STRUCTURE AND MITOCHONDRIAL POLYPHYLY IN NORTH AMERICAN GADWALLS (ANAS STREPERA)
(The American Ornithologists’ Union, 2006-03-25)We examined population genetic structure in Gadwalls (Anas strepera) to test the prediction that female philopatry and fi delity to migratory fl yways have contributed to the partitioning of mitochondrial variation ... -
Phylogeography of the Rufous-Naped Wren (Campylorhynchus rufinucha): Speciation and Hybridization in Mesoamerica
(American Ornithological Society, 2009-04-19)The Rufous-naped Wren (Campylorhynchus rufinucha) is a sedentary, morphologically variable species distributed in the dry forests of Mesoamerica. It ranges from Colima, Mexico, south to Costa Rica along the Pacific slope, ... -
PARENTAL CARE AT NESTS OF TWO AGE CLASSES OF MALE AMERICAN REDSTART: IMPLICATIONS FOR FEMALE MATE CHOICE
(American Ornithological Society, 1994-04-06)We compared food provisioning at nests of two age classes of male American Redstarts (Setophaga ruticilla). Older male redstarts are more likely to obtain a mate than yearling males. We hypothesized that females actively ... -
Nuclear locus divergence at the early stages of speciation in the Orchard Oriole complex
(John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2016-05-30)As two lineages diverge from one another, mitochondrial DNA should evolve fixed differences more rapidly than nuclear DNA due to its smaller effective population size and faster mutation rate. As a consequence, molecular ... -
Using Color to Define Species Boundaries: Quantitative Analysis in The Orchard Oriole Complex Supports the Recognition of Two Species
(American Ornithological Society, 2007-03-15)The recent divergence of Orchard (Icterus spurius spurius) and Fuertes’s Orioles (I. s. fuertesi) makes them an ideal system for investigating species boundaries. Orchard and Fuertes’s Orioles differ in several respects. ... -
Testing the effect of transient Plio‐Pleistocene barriers in monsoonal Australo‐Papua: did mangrove habitats maintain genetic connectivity in the Black Butcherbird
(Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011-11-08)Changes in climate and sea level are hypothesized to have promoted the diversification of biota in monsoonal Australia and New Guinea by causing repeated range disjunctions and restricting gene flow between isolated ... -
Random interbreeding between cryptic lineages of the Common Raven: evidence for speciation in reverse
(Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011-04-22)DNA sequence studies frequently reveal evidence of cryptic lineages in morphologically uniform species, many of which turn out to be evolutionarily distinct species. The Common Raven (Corvus corax) includes two deeply ... -
Himalayan black bulbuls (Hypsipetes leucocephalus niggerimus) exhibit sexual dichromatism under ultraviolet light that is invisible to the human eye
(Springer Nature Limited, 2017-04-06)Sexual dichromatism is a key proxy for the intensity of sexual selection. Studies of dichromatism in birds may, however, have underestimated the intensity and complexity of sexual selection because they used museum specimens ... -
Geographic Variation and Genetic Structure in the Streak-Backed Oriole: Low Mitochondrial DNA Differentiation Reveals Recent Divergence
(American Ornithological Society, 2008-09-24)Many avian species from the temperate zone show low levels of genetic diversity when compared with species from the tropics, although there are some interesting exceptions, and species whose ranges occur across the ... -
Genomic evidence of speciation reversal in ravens
(Springer Nature Limited, 2018-03-02)Many species, including humans, have emerged via complex reticulate processes involving hybridisation. Under certain circumstances, hybridisation can cause distinct lineages to collapse into a single lineage with an admixed ... -
Extensive introgressive hybridization within the northern oriole group (Genus Icterus) revealed by three‐species isolation with migration analysis
(Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2012-08-29)Until recently, studies of divergence and gene flow among closely-related taxa were generally limited to pairs of sister taxa. However, organisms frequently exchange genes with other non-sister taxa. The “northern oriole” ... -
Evolution of Sexual Dichromatism. 2. Carotenoids and Melanins Contribute to Sexual Dichromatism in New World Orioles (Icterus spp.)
(American Ornithological Society, 2008-02-05)Several recent studies have investigated how different proximate mechanisms of color production contribute to sexual dichromatism. These studies suggest that carotenoid pigments—which are frequently subject to sexual ... -
Evolution of Sexual Dichromatism. 1. Convergent Losses of Elaborate Female Coloration in New World Orioles (Icterus spp.)
(American Ornithological Society, 2008-02-05)Studies of sexual dimorphism often focus on the evolution of elaborate male traits, whereas the evolution of elaborate females has been largely ignored. Yet a phylogenetic perspective suggests that changes in either male ... -
Documentation of female song in a newly recognized species, the Puerto Rican Oriole (Icterus portoricensis)
(2016-10-24)Evolutionary biologists often assume that male competition for females is the root of the evolution of elaborate coloration and song. However, recent findings show that in the ancestral history of songbirds, it is likely ... -
Convergent Gains of Red Carotenoid-Based Coloration in the New World Blackbirds
(American Ornithological Society, 2011-08-19)Many birds have colorful plumage ornaments that utilize carotenoid pigments, and these are often displayed in signaling contexts. Researchers in behavioral ecology have focused on examining carotenoids in general, and red ...
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