[Posted by Chuck Almdale, submitted by Ray Juncosa]

This story is about the work UCLA evolutionary biologist Pamela Yeh has been doing with our local Dark-eyed Juncos on the UCLA campus. This is work that SMBAS has helped fund for several years, in addition to the Zoom presentations she and her staff have given to our chapter. If you have donated to SMBAS in the past, this was (as they say on TV) Your Dollars At Work! We have another such presentation scheduled for next spring, I believe.

Link to the PNAS paper by Diamant & Yeh. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520996122

Link to their last SMBAS Zoom program.

Click this link or click the photo below to go to the New York Times article.

If the N.Y. Times links above don’t work for you, try this one to Phys.Org, written by Sanjukta Mondal on 12-18-25; they aren’t so mingy about people reading an occasional article.
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-urban-birds-beak-rapidly-covid.html