Use of DNA markers to study bird migration

The molecular methods that are presently being used for studying phylogenetics, phylogeography and population genetics can also be applied to study bird migration. They are powerful and can supplement the information obtained from ringing, telemetry, morphometrics, ringing, radar tracking and isotope analysis. This short review describes the principles, scopes and limitations DNA methods and DNA markers that are relevant for migration research, such as DNA sequences, short tandem repeats (microsatellites), single nucleotide polymorphisms, amplified fragment length polymorphism, inter simple sequence repeats and molecular sexing.