Bird Strike Committee Proceedings
Date of this Version
August 2006
Abstract
This poster presents the development of DNA techniques by the Smithsonian Institution Feather Lab to identify bird remains recovered from military and civil bird aircraft collisions (bird strikes). The following steps for molecular identification of forensic samples are explained: receipt of sample, extraction, amplification, sequencing, and final data analysis using computer software. Recommendations for collecting bird strike samples for DNA analysis are also discussed. This work compliments the continuing work of the Feather Lab by providing a molecular signature to verify bird strike samples that do not contain sufficient feather remains for morphological identification.