November 13 - The Parrot Club welcomes back Dr. Kevin Burgio on November 13 for his new talk, “Extinction in Two Acts: The Life and Death of the Carolina Parakeet.”

Dr. Burgio will be following up on the Carolina parakeet research he talked about the last time he spoke at the Parrot Club. Find out what he and his colleagues learned about this extinct parrot's range, migratory patterns, and what likely caused their extinction (and when) which has remained a mystery for almost 100 years! (The Carolina parakeet, the U.S.’s only native parrot, went extinct 100 years ago in 1918.)

Dr. Kevin R. Burgio is a US Air Force veteran, first-generation college student, and currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut. He is collaborating with researchers from a variety of disciplines, including: ecology, journalism, education, and communications to create effective science communication training, as well as the tools needed to evaluate the effectiveness of training. As science and technology becomes increasingly intertwined in everyone’s lives, the importance of teaching scientists to communicate to the general public cannot be overstated.

When not working on science communication, he is an integrative ecologist and conservation biologist with a range of interests. However, he is most interested in the mechanisms of species range limitations and how disturbance (climate change and habitat fragmentation) influences species distribution patterns and extinction processes.
His research focuses on using an integrative approach to understanding parrot distributions; the ecology, biogeography, and assembly of vertebrate communities; and extinction in parrots and parasites. His goal is to bridge the divide between ecological theory and on-the-ground conservation in order to make the best possible decisions not just for now, but for the future as well. He also advocates for inclusiveness in science and you can follow him on Twitter @KRBurgio.