We have recently started, together with national and international partners, genomics work on wild birds, which complements our ongoing molecular work of molecular sexing of individuals and determining extra-pair paternities.

The department of Animal Ecology started collecting tissue samples from birds (mainly Great Tits, Blue Tits and Pied Flycatchers) and Winter Moth since 1993. These samples are used for different applications:

  • sexing birds (specific PCR)
  • assigning the real father (microsatellites)
  • studies on population structure (mtDNA and sequencing)
  • linking personality and laying date to genes (SNP’s)

Because the molecular facilities are shared with the other departments within the NIOO the equipment and expertise are of high quality.

When the required equipment is not available at the NIOO (for example for the detection of 10.000 SNP’s in 2000 individuals) there is cooperation with other labs.

All samples collected (bloodsamples, feathers, eggs, etc.) are linked to a record in the database which makes it is easy to check if a sample from a individual bird is available and to find the storrage place. At the moment the AnE-database contains over 40.000 samples. Molecular data (for example the sex of a bird or a genotype) is also stored in the same database.

For some research questions we want to know if the feeding father is also biological father of the chicks. Microsatellites are amplified in a PCR and the fragments are separated on an ABI 3130 capillary sequencer.   

To analyze the sex of a bird we use a specific PCR-reaction. Fragments are separated on an agarose gel.