In-person
Making Sense of Murmurations with Dr. Natalie Hofmeister
Date
Admission
Note: registration includes admission to the National Nordic Museum. Søren Solkær: Sort Sol closes March 10—visit it before it's gone!
When the seasons change, millions of starlings take to the air across the northern hemisphere. It is not the bird’s migration that captures our attention, but a phenomenon called murmuration, when hypnotic gyres of several thousand birds turn as if one body. This behavior, not the bird’s discordant song nor its voracious appetite, draws our attention to the common starling. Captivating as it may be, what exactly is a murmuration? Scientists hypothesize that predators shape these swirling masses of birds, or that the birds themselves congregate to keep warm overnight. But for centuries, humans have found their own reflections in this behavior: starlings sometimes signal a divine judgment, and other times an industrious workforce. This public talk will explore how biologists make sense of the murmurations that transform individual starlings into a coordinated whole, and how we identify ourselves in these birds.
Speakers
-
Dr. Natalie Hofmeister
BioNatalie Hofmeister is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and a Research Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.
Dr. Natalie Hofmeister
Natalie Hofmeister is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and a Research Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.
She received a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University in 2022 and a Master of Arts in Conservation Biology in 2015. Much of her work to date reconstructs the evolution of the European starling in North America, and her first book project, Citizen Starling, follows how bird-lovers reacted to the European starling when it arrived in the US at the end of the nineteenth century.