So far, so good … everyone in our group of freshman advisees seems to be transitioning well to Cornell after these first weeks of Fall classes, in part owing to the wise mentoring by my student advising partner Alyssa Rodriguez (thanks, Alyssa!). And way to go, freshmen! Shown here: (top…
We are enjoying a hard-working visit by Argentinians Dr. Cecilia Kopuchian and Dr. Darío Lijtmaer, who along with Leo Campagna from our lab are in the midst of prepping LOTS of samples for ddRAD sequencing as part of a project investigating the potential role of rivers as barriers to gene…
Grad student Natalie Hofmeister and former lab member Dustin Rubenstein just published a new paper in Ecology Letters on adaptation to environmental variability in African starlings. Natalie and Dustin show that variability in the environment of African starlings influences patterns of substitution in the glucocorticoid receptor, which allows organisms to…
Happy SNEEB to all: Our lab group joined with the Lab of Ornithology postdocs more generally to host the inaugural Fall semester SNEEB (the Friday social hour for departments with the prior names of Systematics and Ecology, Entomology, and Neurobiology and Behavior…) last evening. Took a little more pre-planning than…
Jake brings home the NAOC talks: Grad student Jake Berv was the closer in our long series of presentations at the NAOC meeting that ended yesterday. Talking in the very last session of the conference, Jake presented on his deep-time comparisons of diversification patterns in the avian Tree-of-Life, and on…
Petra Deane-Coe on Swamp Sparrow adaptation: PhD student Petra Deane-Coe gave a clear and animated talk on her innovative explorations of adaptive divergence in swamp sparrows that reside in different marsh habitats. Part of Petra’s presentation involved an in-depth comparison of differentiation as measured through complementary metrics for comparing genome-wide…
Nick Mason is everywhere at the NAOC! As in past years, it seems like PhD student Nick Mason was everywhere at the North American Ornithological Conference; in fact I’m quite sure that no other student at the 2000+ meeting had this same degree of multifaceted contribution. Nick was accordingly awarded…
Stepfanie on Northern Flicker genomics: at the NAOC conference a day ago, PhD student Stepfanie Aguillon presented on her ongoing field and genomic studies of the great plains hybrid zone between yellow-shafted and red-shafted flickers. Even though these two forms are distinct in many plumage traits even beyond their namesake…
Leo on the genomics of a sexually selected avian radiation: Research Associate Leo Campagna led off our lab’s presentations at the North American Ornithological Conference via a talk on his ongoing work on seedeater genomics. The story of this avian radiation just keeps getting better and better as Leo delves…
Natalie Hoffmeister on starling evo-ecology: PhD student Natalie Hoffmeister gave a professional and polished talk today at the NAOC on how endocrine receptors vary genetically in response to selection resulting from environmental variation. Hard stuff to describe to a general audience of ornithologists who aren’t specialists in either of these…
Jen Walsh on saltmarsh sparrow hybridization: continuing the series of excellent (I’m biased, but they really have all been excellent) talks by our lab group at the NAOC meeting, postdoc Dr. Jen Walsh presented today on her PhD studies of the relative fitness of saltmarsh sparrows, nelson’s sparrows, and their…
Winged warblers: the story is out! David Toews’ presentation on the work he and Scott Taylor have led on the genomics of Blue- and Golden-winged Warblers played to a standing-room-only audience at the North American Ornithological Conference yesterday, and apparently there were many dozens of additional people left outside who…
Stepfanie and Brianna in the field: Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon and rising sophomore Brianna Mims spent much of the summer chasing flickers across their hybrid zone in the Great Plains. Here are a few photos of these field researchers and their birds:
Our new Handbook of Bird Biology is here! This week we received the very first advance copies of our new comprehensive textbook of ornithology, just in time to share it with the world at the big NAOC bird conference in August. This means that it will be available from booksellers…
Hybrid Zones Revisited: photo shows Dr. Vanya Rohwer (CUMV Curator of Birds and Mammals) showing postdoc Jen Walsh a series of specimens collected recently by Vanya and Cornell students as part of an ongoing effort to document changes in species distributions and patterns of genetic interchange.
Congrats to grad student Nick Mason, lead author Kelly Zamudio, and former EEB PhD graduate Rayna Bell on their paper in the most recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Zamudio, K. R., Bell, R. C., & Mason, N. A. (2016). Phenotypes in phylogeography: Species’ traits, environmental…
Kudos to grad student Nick Mason, his MS advisor Kevin Burns, and collaborator Phil Unitt for doing the hard work of turning their molecular phylogeny of the entire tanager radiation into a series of formal recommendations on the taxonomic nomenclature of this beautiful but complicated group. This is the kind…
Evolution2016: Jake Berv gave a talk entitled “The genomic signature of the lilliput effect across the K/PG mass extinction” at the Evolution conference in Austin.
Evolution2016: Recent graduate Ben Van Doren presented a poster at the Evolution Conference on his studies of comparative genomics in the stonechat complex.
Evolution2016: Postdoc Jen Walsh presented a poster at the 2016 Evolution conference on “Signals of Adaptive Variation in Fresh and Salt Water Populations of Ammodramus Sparrows: Defining Conservation Units Based on Evolutionary Potential” as part of her ongoing research on how these sparrows have adapted (or not) to different environments…