Tracking migration

Indiana University Bloomington serves as a 'natural laboratory' for wildlife research

By Indiana University

March 6^th, 2024

Each spring, Alex Jahn, the co-director of Midwest Center for Biodiversity at Indiana University Bloomington and an assistant research scientist in the Department of Biology, takes students just a stone's throw from the classroom to participate in hands-on research. Students learn how to catch American robins and attach a miniature, GPS-enabled transmitter “backpack.” They also place a small metal band on the bird’s leg to identify it with a unique number before releasing it safely back into the wild. Students learn how to measure the birds’ health in various ways, including testing them for communicable diseases like West Nile virus and Lyme disease. Their research has led to several discoveries, including that most of the robins they track migrate to the southeastern U.S., between Florida and Texas, and they can journey back to Bloomington in just a few days.