Image credit: Dr. Sushma Reddy

Natural history museums are repositories of past and present biodiversity information. This information can be crucial for understanding current conditions, invaluable for comparing to what we know of the past, and critical for establishing a baseline with which to predict future changes. Dr. Sushma Reddy will describe new discoveries and ways of using bird specimens in natural history collections to study biodiversity beyond taxonomy to inform environmental health and impacts of climate change. Dr. Reddy will introduce a new initiative at the Bell Museum to create a network across Minnesota to salvage dead wildlife and establish a repository for research on ecology and ecosystem health. We expect this new project to stimulate research and connect scientists across the state and excite students and citizen scientists to participate in innovative and integrative science.

Sushma Reddy is the Breckenridge Chair of Birds, Curator of Birds at the Bell Museum, and Associate Professor at the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. Her training includes a BA from Barnard College, MA and PhD from Columbia University. Reddy has extensive experience at museums, working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and conducting research in over 20 museums across the globe. Reddy has over two decades of experience working with birds, natural history collections, specimen research, public outreach, and education. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles, conducted numerous biodiversity surveys across the globe, and trained more than 100 high-school, undergraduate, and graduate students to work with museum specimens.

Registration for this free event is required: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__UKJn8d5S6-SjpSbJntMOw

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