Evolution2016: Grad student Natalie Hofmeister gave a talk on how birds cope with and adapt to environmental variability, titled “Environmental fluctuations influence the evolution of the glucocorticoid receptor in African starlings.” She found that starling lineages that experience greater variance in rainfall show lower rates of substitution in this stress…
Evolution2016: Leo presented on the genomic landscape of differentiation in capuchino seedeaters at the Evolution conference in Austin, TX. The Capuchino’s have shown very little genetic differences in previous studies, but using data from whole genome sequencing we were able to find narrow divergence peaks among species. Many of these…
Postdoc Dave Toews presented the ongoing research in the lab on the genomic consequences of hybridization between golden-winged and blue-winged warblers, which he is working on closely with postdoc Scott Taylor and others. David described how there are only a few genomic regions that differ between these taxa and that…
Congratulations to Leo Campagna on his promotion to the academic title of Research Associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Leo came to the Lab as a postdoc in 2013, and in the years since he has spearheaded an innovative research program on the genomics of speciation in Sporophila seedeaters,…
Ben and Maria are Merrill Presidential Scholars: congratulations to seniors Ben Van Doren and Maria Smith for being honored today as Merrill Presidential Scholars, which means that among other leadership contributions and accomplishments they each rank academically in the top 1% of their soon-to-be graduating class. A super-neat aspect of…
Congrats to grad student Jake Berv who advanced to PhD candidacy today by passing his qualifying exam (which we call the “A” exam here). Next time you see him, be sure to ask Jake about the major constituents of ‘Cole’s Law.’
Lovette Lab field trip, with 600 lbs of party favors for people to take home… left to right, that’s Jen Walsh, Natalie Hofmeister, Leo Campagna, Irby Lovette, and half of Daisy the former Cow.
Graduate students Petra Deane-Coe, Stepfanie Aguillon, and Natalie Hofmeister led a workshop in ornithology and evolution for 9th-grade girls from across New York as part of Cornell’s Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Conference this past Saturday. Stepfanie managed a hands-on bird-banding demonstration while lab members Jen Walsh, Dave Toews, and Sahas Barve…
Sapayoas are cool: a group of Cornell students including current senior Ben Van Doren and junior Sarah Djelski are getting some nice attention for their paper on the biology of the enigmatic Sapayoa, a little-known bird of Panama and northern South America that turns out to be the only representative…
Congrats to two lab group alumni: two students whom we knew through all four years of their Cornell experience are heading off to work on birds via their new PhD programs in the Fall. Kathryn Grabenstein will be at the University of Colorado in the lab of our own Dr.…
New paper on goose phylogeography and conservation: In this paper, visiting researcher Cecilia Kopuchian (Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral, Argentina) and Leo Campagna from our lab use genomic data to explore the history of colonization of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands by the Upland Goose (Chloephaga picta) and the Ruddy-headed Goose…
We are pleased to welcome back Milene Gaiotti, a visiting researcher from the University of Brasilia, to continue her genetic work here on the extremely endangered Araripe manakin.
Grants to Grads: congratulations to graduate student Natalie Hoffmeister for a substantial travel award from the Einaudi Center for International Studies for her forthcoming pilot study of local adaptation in Argentinian seabirds, and similar congratulations to graduate student Stepfanie Aguillon for a substantial Peacock Award from the Garden Society of…
New paper on sparrow hybridization by postdoc Jen Walsh: Jen just published a neat paper from her PhD work at UNH; study looks at the genetic interplay between hybridizing Saltmarsh and Nelson’s Sparrows and finds evidence for neutral diffusion of some regions; strong selection and local adaptation in other genomic…
Cornell article on our Patagonia field course: http://spring2016.periodicals.cals.cornell.edu/students/new-ecology-course-takes-students-patagonia
Shawn Billerman is the recipient of an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship and we are all accordingly very excited about his forthcoming return to Cornell! In the Fall Shawn will begin working here on the genomics of hybrids zones in the Great Plains, based in part on the CUMV’s large collection of…
Congratulations to Dustin Rubenstein, who was just awarded tenure at Columbia University! Dustin is one our our group’s longest-term colleagues and alumni, dating to his PhD years here at Cornell when we worked together on starling evolution, the Kenya field course, and much more. Here is a throw-back photo of…
Art, Science, and Writing in and about the Galapagos: we just returned from the field component of our three-class curriculum for freshmen that uses the Galapagos Islands as a linked framework for training in writing, evolutionary biology, and artistic expression. My thanks to the course leaders — Liz, Nick, Scott,…
New Ornithology textbook coming this summer… just got the final cover proofs for our massively revised Handbook of Bird Biology, along with an official publication date of August 1, 2016. Very happy to finally be able to say with confidence: look for it soon in bookstores near you…! …
NSF smiles upon us. In this era of 4% funding rates, we are particularly appreciative of having been awarded a significant grant from the National Science Foundation for a new study entitled “Quantifying genomic porosity in non-model radiations.” In addition to Irby and Leo Campagna (Leo was a prime mover…