Every year, millions of birds crash into windows in cities along their migratory path. For decades, scientists and volunteers have risen at dawn in spring and fall to collect the fallen birds, rehabilitating the injured and documenting the dead. The bodies of the birds killed in these collisions are a treasure trove of scientific information, especially when compared year after year. A new study in the journal Molecular Ecology makes use of these specimens to help understand the relationship between birds and the microbes living in their guts—which appears to be wildly different from mammals and their microbiomes. The scientists’ work involved DNA sequencing, and a whole lot of bird poop.
Click here for original story, A final present from birds killed in window collisions: poop that reveals their microbiomes
Source: Phys.org