If you’ve ever posted a photo on the massive community science project called iNaturalist and wondered how such contributions get used in research …. well, today’s guest is here to tell us about one especially stunning example. It involves 1.6 million such crowd-sourced observations, and the timing of the migration of hummingbirds in Eastern North America.

You’ve probably heard it said that hummingbirds love red flowers, and scientists in the Hopkins Lab at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University took a much closer look at that connection thanks to all that community data, and the use of artificial intelligence to sort through it all.

One of the Harvard scientists, a post-doctoral researcher in the plant evolution lab named Patrick McKenzie, is here to explain what they learned and how.

Patrick has written that, “Quiet hours in the sun, meditating with the bugs, plants, and birds, are my inspiration as an evolutionary biologist.”

He is always on the lookout for patterns – and then asking himself why each pattern unfolds – like the why of red flowers and hummingbirds, for example. He was part of the team at Dr. Robin Hopkins’s lab at the Arnold Arboretum that published the hummingbird research that’s our topic today. Besides his extensive training in plant evolution, Patrick McKenzie is a keen birder, and I’m glad to welcome him.

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