Team Bio

This project is a multidisciplinary, collaborative effort and is but one part in a long-term collaborative research program. The primary collaborators for the genome sequencing work brings together an evolutionary biologist (Mays) with the bioinformatics expertise of a biomedical researcher (Denvir). Additionally, the broader team has included numerous researchers from Japan, Taiwan and China who over the years have helped a amass a DNA sample collection that makes this research possible.

Herman Mays

Being a research zoologist is a childhood dream come true. I've long been fascinated by the diversity of living things, especially animals, and have come to learn that we may explain life's diversity under a single, very powerful conceptual framework, evolution.

My graduate work at the University of Kentucky and later postdoctoral work at Auburn University was focused on avian mating systems and reproductive behavior. Throughout my career I've used molecular genetic tools in my work. DNA can tell us how two individuals are related in a population and thus help uncover the sometimes elusive mating decisions made by animals in the field or tell us how two species are related thereby addressing deeper questions on evolutionary diversification. Since my origins as a behavioral biologist my research has shifted to the study of population and species history using molecular genetic tools.

I've been especially interested in recent years in how evolution has shaped the biological diversity of Southeast and East Asia since my first research in this region in Taiwan nearly 17 years ago. Since then I've traveled to Taiwan, China and Japan several times exploring mountains and isolated islands in the region collecting genetic samples to unravel the mysteries of the region's birds. My colleagues and I have collected hundreds of DNA samples from birds in the region and used genetic data to publish phylogenetic work on the endemic Asian bird genus Liocichla, to solve puzzles of species diversity in the Light-vented and Taiwan Bulbuls and the Varied Tit, in collaborative work on the evolutionary history of Asian Tailorbirds, and in studies coupling genetic history with climate history in an endemic bird in Taiwan.

I also have a keen interest in broadly sharing my enthusiasm for biodiversity, evolution and scientific research in general, through informal museum education and programming and through the internet and social media via my web page, Twitter, and Flickr.

James Denvir

The study of complex diseases uses molecular approaches to address several interrelated questions on the development and underlying environmental and genetic causes of disease. Due to the complexity of these questions, and of the data generated in answering them, it is no longer feasible to achieve these aims by addressing them from the perspective of a single field of research. Consequently, we need teams of researchers with expertise in their own fields and the ability to communicate and collaborate with those outside of their fields of research.

My role in this research is as a biostatistician and bioinformaticist. As a collaborator, I aim to maintain an understanding of statistical techniques, to determine which of those techniques are best applied to complex bioinformatic problems, to maintain the technical skills to perform those analyses, and to present and communicate the results to the research community at large. A key aspect to this collaborative research, is the ability to communicate with researchers outside one's own field; both in terms of understanding the research being performed in the lab, and in terms of being able to explain the choices behind the analyses being used and their results. On occasion, it may be necessary to develop novel statistical techniques in order to perform the analyses required for a particular project.

In addition to biomedical bioinformatics I recently have collaborated on several studies of evolutionary genetics in non-model organisms and look to continue this collaborative work studying the genomics of wild birds and mammals.