Sarah Hird

Associate Professor

Molecular and Cell Biology / Microbiology

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@sarahmhird

Education: BS University of Idaho, MS University of Idaho, PhD Louisiana State University, Post-doc University of California Davis

Research Interests: My main research questions are about the evolution of host-associated microbiomes and microbial phylogeography. I’m also interested in how we can use/create computational tools to answer those questions. Specifically, I focus on what factors shape and maintain the gut microbiomes of wild birds.

Selected Publications:

Gil JC, Hird SM. Multiomics Characterization of the Canada Goose Fecal Microbiome Reveals Selective Efficacy of Simulated Metagenomes. Microbiol Spectr. 2022 Dec 21;10(6):e0238422. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.02384-22. Epub 2022 Nov 1. PMID: 36318011; PMCID: PMC9769641.

Capunitan D, Johnson O, Terrill RS, Hird SM. Evolutionary signal in the gut microbiomes of 74 bird species from Equatorial Guinea. Molecular Ecology, 29(4):829-847. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.15354

Kirsten Grond, Kayce C Bell, John R Demboski, Malia Santos, Jack M Sullivan, Sarah M Hird, No evidence for phylosymbiosis in western chipmunk species, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 96, Issue 1, February 2020, fiz182, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiz182

Grond Kirsten, Guilani Hannah and Hird Sarah M. Spatial heterogeneity of the shorebird gastrointestinal microbiome7 Soc. open sci.http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191609

Hird SM, Sánchez C, Carstens BC, Brumfield RT. 2015. Comparative gut microbiota of 59 Neotropical bird species. Frontiers in Microbiology. In press. [DOI: doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2015.01403] (OPEN ACCESS)

Hird SM, Carstens BC, Cardiff SW, Dittmann DL, Brumfield RT. 2014. Sampling locality is more detectable than taxonomy or ecology in the brood-parasitic Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater). PeerJ, 2: 321. [DOI: 10.7717/peerj.321] (OPEN ACCESS)

Hird SM. 2012. lociNGS: a lightweight alternative for assessing suitability of next-generation loci for evolutionary analysis. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46847. [DOI: 10.137/journal.pone.0046847]  (OPEN ACCESS)

Hird SM, Brumfield RT and BC Carstens. 2011. PRGmatic: an efficient pipeline for collating genome-enriched second generation sequencing data using a “provisional-reference genome”. Molecular Ecology Resources, 11(4): 743-748. [DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2011.03005.x]

Hird S, Kubatko L and B Carstens. 2010. Replicated subsampling enables accurate species tree estimation in empirical systems. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 57(2): 888-898. [DOI:10.1016/j.ympev.2010.08.006]

Hird S, Reid N, Demboski J and J Sullivan. 2010. Introgression at differentially aged contact zones in red-tailed chipmunks (Tamias ruficaudus). Genetica, 138(8): 869-883.[DOI: 10.1007/s10709-010-9470-z]

Hird S and J Sullivan. 2009. Assessing gene flow across a hybrid zone in red-tailed chipmunks (Tamias ruficaudus). Molecular Ecology, 18: 3097-3109. [DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04196.x]