Holding the delicate feathered body in one hand and cool metal calipers in the other, Tia Cobb narrows her gaze to measure the bird’s tiny beak, nostrils to tip. She takes five other precise measurements of the beak before moving on to the next specimen. Tia and her mentor Libby Megna do this a total of 525 times, collecting data for 135 species of birds from two families: Passerellidae (New World sparrows) and Parulidae (New World warblers).

[PHOTO: Tia takes measurements of an Ammospizza cauducuta (saltmarch sparrow) specimen at Cornell's Lab of Ornithology]

Tia is a Union Commonwealth University (UCU) junior from Corbin, Kentucky. She and Assistant Professor of Biology Libby Megna traveled to Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York this summer to conduct original research on bill morphology and its effects on speciation. 

Senior biology major Lena Visarius, from North Rhine-Westphalia Germany, conducted an independent study on the same topic, but using a different dataset. Her data was gleaned from AVONET, a recently created database of various traits and measurements of nearly 11,000 bird species. Under Megna’s guidance, both students learned to analyze their data using the coding language R and the modeling program BAMM.

“For this project, we wanted to look at the correlation between the speciation rate and the trait evolution rate of two Passerine forms, Passerellidae and Parulidae,” Lena says. “Looking at the data and really analyzing it this way was completely new to me.”

[PHOTO: Lena works at her laptop while Megna looks on]

This semester, Tia, Lena, and Megna will submit a paper detailing their combined findings to various academic journals. Together, they are building on a body of knowledge tracing back to Darwin’s observations of differences in bird beaks that led to his insights about natural selection. As co-authors, the three hope to contribute to the scientific community’s understanding of trait evolution and biodiversity. Both students want to continue their studies after graduation — Lena in forensic anthropology and Tia in biology — and experiences like this are part of how UCU is preparing them for these chosen paths.

“My end goal is to work with live animals, but starting with these specimens really helped me to learn how to handle these animals with care,” Tia says. “When I do get to work with them when they're alive, I've already got some hands-on experience.”

Tia’s dream is to work with animals and teach others about them, too. Whether that be in a lab, classroom, zoo, aquarium, wildlife rehabilitation facility, or another setting, she wants to devote her time to animal care and the study of life. She is double majoring in biology and English, minoring in theatre, and working as a tutor at Union’s Writing Center. These experiences, combined with this research project, are preparing Tia for where she wants to go in life.

Providing students with opportunities for undergraduate research is part of Megna’s personal mission.  She says her own experience as an undergraduate researcher shaped the kind of scientist she has become, and she wants to pass this type of real-world experience on to her students. 

“It's really fun, and I find it really synergistic with my teaching,” Megna says. “When I'm doing research, stuff that I'm teaching comes up, and when I'm doing research, I'm learning new things that I bring into my teaching.”

She adds, “I also really, really strongly believe in paying undergraduates to do research, just as I was paid when I was a student. It’s skilled labor.”

Megna helped Tia to apply for a scholarship from the Appalachian College Association’s Ledford Scholars program, which is designed for students from Appalachian and contiguous counties. Tia was awarded the scholarship, which funded her summer travel and compensated her for research hours. Through the Ledford program, she was also able to present her research at the McNair-Ledford Undergraduate Research Symposium at Lee University in September.

[PHOTO: Megna and Tia at Lee University]

“At first, I felt kind of like an imposter,” Tia says of presenting her research at the conference, “but then I realized that this is where I belong. I like presenting research. I like being with a bunch of nerds, and I hope to do it again as soon as possible.”

She says her background in theatre gave her some perspective on how to evaluate her presentation: “You just have to look back at it and see how the audience reacted, how you felt in that moment, and then combine those two and use it to be better next time.”

As an international student, Lena was not eligible to apply for the Ledford scholarship, so Megna used her own faculty research stipend to pay Lena for her work. 

[PHOTO: Lena presenting her research at Union]

“Working with Libby was very fun,” Lena says. “She was just the perfect supervisor. She’s very knowledgeable in what she's doing, and that really helped me a lot.”

This semester, Tia is compiling the combined research into the final paper as her own independent study.