The museum's collaborations with Dr. Phil Lavretsky, University of Texas El Paso, on the global mallard complex expanded in 2018 to New Zealand Gray to address conservation issues related to the endemic New Zealand Gray Duck. The museum provided expertise in the field in collecting, sampling, preserving and scoring phenotypes. Genetics have shown that pure New Zealand Gray Ducks still exist and hybridization rates with mallards may be less prevalent than once thought. Similar with Florida Mottled and Mexican ducks, hybridization seems to be more restricted to urban areas where feral mallards have ben introduced. The aims of the project is to determine the impact of hybridization between grey ducks and mallards on the genetic makeup of both species, in general, and grey ducks, more specifically and to obtain grey duck and mallard samples for a larger evolutionary study into the mechanisms behind monochromatic and dichromatic systems. In addition to specimens of pure and hybrid gray ducks, our team were also able to obtain several species of native waterfowl for our collections here and at UTEP.