Congrats to Becca Brunner: UC Berkeley Hellman Fellow. Congratulations to Becca as she heads off to start her PhD at Berkeley, where she has now been named a Hellman Graduate Fellow (and with baobab trees in the background, she definitely wins ‘coolest photo’ in their Hellman Fellow press release)
Jake on manakin phylogeography at Neotropical Ornithology Congress: grad student Jake Berv talked yesterday at the NOC in Manaus (Brazil) about his studies of genetic and song variation in the White-crowned Manakin complex.
Postdoc Leo Campagna’s new paper on dissecting the complex demographic and phylogenetic history of the Sporophila seedeaters is just out in Molecular Ecology. In addition to revealing new insights into this avian rapid radiation, Leo and his collaborators also make some useful but sobering points about the potential for spurious…
Luciano Calderón at Argentina Evolution conference: visiting Lab researcher Luciano Calderón is talking today at the first-ever Argentine Evolution meeting (I Reunion Argentina de Biología Evolutiva, in Cordoba, Argentina) about the population genomics of turtle doves across Europe. Luciano visited Cornell in February and worked with postdoc Leo Campagna to…
Scott’s cover article in TREE on climate change and hybrid zones: Postdoc Scott Taylor’s synthetic review of how hybrid zones can be powerful tools for tracking climate change is featured on the cover of the current issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution! Taylor SA, Larson EL, Harrison RG. 2015.…
David’s talk at Evolution: genomics of hybridizing warblers. Postdoc David Toews’ talk at the Evolution conference in Brazil covered his ongoing work on the hybridization genomics of the Myrtle and Audubon’s forms of Yellow-rumped Warblers, and on admixture mapping that is revealing interesting candidate genes for traits that differ between…
Jake’s talk at Evolution: phylogenomics of all birds. Jake Berv’s talk at the evolution meeting was on “A Fully Resolved, Comprehensive Phylogeny of Birds (Aves) using Targeted Next Generation DNA Sequencing.” In it, Jake covered his forthcoming paper on relationships within Neoaves, and on the datasets and analysis methods that…
Leo’s talk at Evolution: genomics of an avian radiation: Leo presented his most recent explorations into genome-wide patterns of divergence in Sporophila seed-eaters using analytical methods pioneered by our collaborators Ilan Gronau and Adam Siepel. This avian radiation is a wonderful test-case of (very) low genetic divergence among a suite…
Current lab members in Guarujá: six of our current lab members are presenting their research this week at the Evolution conference in Guarujá, Brazil: (from left to right) Jake Berv, David Toews, Stepfane Aguillon, Leo Campagna, Scott Taylor, and Nick Mason. By all reports, their talks and presentations have all…
Sebastian Cabanne at Evolution: ddRAD studies of Neotropical forest birds. At the Evolution conference in Brazil, our visiting collaborator from Argentina — Sebastian Cabanne — presented his studies of divergence and gene flow among populations of several Neotropical birds. Some of the underlying data were generated by Sebastian and Leo…
Graduate students Ben Freeman and Nick Mason have a new paper out in PLOS ONE: Freeman BG, Mason NA (2015) The Geographic Distribution of a Tropical Montane Bird Is Limited by a Tree: Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) and Colombian Oaks (Quercus humboldtii) in the Northern Andes. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0128675.…
107 years of avian ecology: (from Irby) I’m enjoying a double pilgrimage to two of the most historically important touch-stones of avian ecology in North America. Earlier in the week I was in Acadia National Park in Maine, where Bik Wheeler (a graduate student at nearby College of the Atlantic)…
Stepfanie on dispersal genomics at Brazil Evolution conference: grad student Stepfanie Aguillon just presented her work on the dispersal genomics of Florida Scrub-jays at the Evolution meeting in Brazil. This project was a robust ‘rotation’ endeavor that Stepfanie motivated during this first year for her at Cornell: Title: Genomic consequences…
These birds aren’t as different as they appear …. the first in our lab group’s series of talks at the Evolution meeting in Brazil:
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon has a new paper out that is an extension of her MS research with Rene Duckworth: Duckworth, R.A. and S.M. Aguillon. 2015. Eco-evolutionary dynamics: investigating multiple causal pathways linking changes in behavior, population density and natural selection. Journal of Ornithology. Abstract: Correlations between population density, natural…
Scott Taylor accepts tenure-track job at U. Colorado!: Warmest of congratulations to Scott for finalizing his future professioral appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder — a strong department in a great place to call home. Both Scott…
Petra is busy in the field… Grad student Petra Deane is in the midst of a multi-part road-trip to capture and sample Swamp Sparrows as part of her PhD project on the genomics of that complex. This image is of a bird she caught and banded yesterday:
Redpolls hit the news, part III … Nick and Scott’s redpoll study has been available for a while in Molecular Ecology’s pre-publication website and it has garnered an impressive amount of outside attention, including coverage in the news section of Science (http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/17_april_2015?pg=44#pg44), and various popular media outlets and blogs like…
Redpoll study hits the news, part I… The paper on redpoll genomics and transcriptomics by grad Nick Mason and postdoc Scott Taylor is now published in Molecular Ecology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13140/abstract
Redpoll study hits the news, part II… Nick and Scott’s redpoll paper was paired with a nice commentary piece by Jan Lifjeld at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13244/full … “… Mason & Taylor (2015), using a large data set of genomewide SNPs, verify that [the redpolls] all belong to a single gene pool with…