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On a recent cool spring morning, I tagged along with Alex Jahn, the co-director of Midwest Center for Biodiversity at Indiana University Bloomington, as he collected data from American robins on campus. Using the trunk of his Subaru as a mobile laboratory, Jahn and his students banded birds, collected blood samples and assessed the health of the winged subjects. The research focuses on how rapid environmental change can effect the birds’ migratory patterns, resulting in a growing role in the spread of communicable diseases such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus in humans.

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