People - Undergraduates

Megan Szymanski (Cornell 2004) is a Hughes Research Scholar majoring in Biology. Malaria is very common in birds, and Megan is documenting the diversity of malarial parasites that infect birds in New York. She is using sequences of mitochondrial DNA from both the avian hosts and their malaria parasites to determine the degree of specialization of the parasites (for example, does a particular strain of parasite only infect a single bird species?) and to explore patterns of coevolution between the birds and malaria (for example, does speciation in hosts drive speciation in parasites?).

Megan and Amy collecting data on warblers.

Megan taking a blood sample from a warbler.