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The Avian Sing alongs with Ted Miller
Dr. Ted Miller has studied and taught throughout the world, from studying Walruses in Alaska, to performing research on shorebirds in New Zealand, before coming to work as a professor in Memorial University in 1994. Now in Newfoundland, Dr. Miller has done various studies on the avian and seals of Newfoundland. A few years ago, he worked on the metabolic rates of the various seals of the region. Presently, he has two projects going on at the same time, on the sandpipers of Newfoundland (one of his first avian studies in the Boreal), and cranial differences in seals.
Dr. Miller’s recent ongoing project is on the vocalization of shorebirds in Newfoundland and Labrador, specifically the sandpipers and the snipes. In the project, he records the many bird calls of different groups throughout the island. What Dr. Miller has discovered is that birds from different regions (even birds of the same species) have a different vocalization patterns. This tells us that the through natural selection and regional changes, that an organism can have structural differences in the same species. When I ask Dr. Miller how this can be used in the conservation of Boreal life, he told me that we need to know about these evolutionary differences for breeding.
Another project Dr. Miller is performing is the study of anatomical differences in certain carnivores, such as lynxs and the harp seals. Similar to his vocalization project, Dr. Miller studies the skulls of these carnivores, and have discovered that, just like the birds, specimens from different regions, even though they are from the same species, have anatomical differences in their skulls and dental structure. When asked as how this can be an issue, he states that this can be problematic as well in interbreeding between two populations. A mate can be denied if the suitor finds that the partner is too structurally different, this may come up in breeding farms, like fox farms, or in the process of introducing a new gene line in a threatened or low populated species.
BOREAL @ MEMORIAL