Living history: Researchers use museum specimens to protect species in decline

When many people today hear the words “extinct,” “DNA” and “birds” in the same sentence, they’re likely to conjure visions of dinosaurs or hear echoes of phrases like “clever girl” followed by screams of terror. However, for Stephanie Galla, a Boise State assistant professor of avian biology, these words are just a few of the building blocks that describe her award-winning research.

Galla has won a National Science Foundation EPSCoR fellowship to study why some bird species survive while other subspecies decline — using DNA from birds living and those long dead. 

The case for the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse

Galla’s study focuses on the evolution of the sharp-tailed grouse, a game bird native to Idaho, with subspecies across North America. Though it may not carry the same weight as a “six-foot turkey” in “Jurassic Park,” the grouse offers potential answers to a lot of fascinating evolutionary questions.

“There are a couple of reasons why we want to look at sharp-tailed grouse,” Galla said. “Sharp-tailed grouse are found here in Idaho, specifically a subspecies called the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, which has experienced about a 95% range-wide decline over the last hundred years.” 

Galla further explains how this is an important opportunity for understanding how diversity is lost in our world and how we could better respond to it.

Her team is curious about whether the Columbian subspecies has, comparatively, lost more diversity than other subspecies; they also question when and how it broke off from other subspecies. Since policies like the Endangered Species Act organize threat status by taxonomic groups, the answers to these questions do more than satisfy curiosity: They help inform which species and subspecies need protection. 

“Conservation really acts at a taxonomic level,” Galla said. “Understanding the boundaries of subspecies has important conservation ramifications.”

Galla’s EPSCoR fellowship builds on years of collaborative work in the Conservation Genetics Lab at Boise State. Her team has already created a reference genome — a high quality genetic framework representing a subspecies — and generated 200 genomes of birds from across the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse range. Researchers use such frameworks to highlight genetic differences between populations and understand evolutionary biology.

Museomics: what 100-year-old specimens can still tell us

To see how the species has changed over time, Galla needs genetic information from birds that lived long ago. Across the country, 10 museums have specimens more than a century old. Galla’s team will extract DNA from small toe-pad samples taken from those specimens, then compare that genetic material against samples from modern birds to track how the species’ diversity has shifted over time. 

However, it’s no simple feat to obtain DNA from ancient specimens, so Galla is teaming up with Professor Richard ‘Ed’ Green of the Paleogenomics Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Green’s Paleogenomics Lab has extracted DNA from mammoth and Neanderthal specimens; in 2023, its efforts also discovered that Balto — a sled dog famed for delivering a shipment of antitoxin to diphtheria-stricken Nome, Alaska, in 1925 — wasn’t part wolf after all. Green’s expertise in ancient-DNA extraction will help guide Galla’s methods.

Additional Boise State collaborators include Stephanie Hudon and Allison Wolfe. Hudon is an associate professor of neuroscience and clinical programs director of the Boise State Sequencing Core; Hudon will assist in the transfer and implementation of paleogenomic techniques at Boise State. Wolfe is an assistant professor of anthropology specializing in paleozoology and paleoarchaeology, working with grouse specimens that are thousands of years old. 

The project draws on additional expertise from grouse, conservation and genomics specialists, including collaborators from the College of Idaho (Anna Himler and Bill Clark), University of Wyoming (Jeffrey Beck), The Peregrine Fund (Jeff Johnson), Colorado Parks and Wildlife (Kathy Griffin), Idaho Department of Fish and Game (Jennifer Struthers), Nevada Department of Wildlife (Justin Small), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (Michael Schroeder and Michael Atamian) and Wyoming Game and Fish Department (Nyssa Waterford). 

For Anna Himler, professor of biology at the College of Idaho, this collaboration offers an exciting opportunity to inform conservation management and teach students about the relevance of natural history in modern science.

“I am thrilled to work with Dr. Galla,” Himler said. “By sampling DNA from museum collections, you can essentially reach back in time and compare that DNA to those of current populations. This research highlights the crucial role natural history museums play in biology and conservation.”

The warning in the data: lessons from an extinct subspecies

Among the museum specimens is the New Mexico sharp-tailed grouse, a subspecies last seen in the wild in 1954 and believed to be extinct today. Its disappearance is a reminder of what’s at stake in the broader question Galla is asking: how and why do some populations dwindle while others persist?

Galla hopes this research will clarify subspecies boundaries and advance conservation strategy for a group that carries cultural and ecological significance across the western United States. 

This publication was supported by the National Science Foundation EPSCoR Program under award number OIA-2624534..