A host of people affiliated with our group were voted in as Elected Members of the American Ornithology Society this year. Warmest of congratulations (!!!) to our current Lab of Ornithology colleagues Nick Mason, Emma Greig, Leo Campagna, and Karan Odom, and similarly to Chris Balakrishnan, Karl Berg, Sarah Kaiser,…
Spurred by several exciting findings in warblers and canaries, current lab members Dave Toews and Natalie Hoffmeister, and lab alum Scott Taylor, reviewed what is known about the evolution and genetics of carotenoid processing in animals in a paper just published in Trends in Genetics. Animals cannot synthesize carotenoids and…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
Congratulations to Scott Taylor for garnering the Don Abbott Postdoctoral Research Award for an outstanding contributed presentation (talk or poster) by a current postdoc at the American Society of Naturalists meeting in mid-January. As seen in this photo, a widespread power failure required Scott to gave his talk on the…
Postdocs Scott Taylor and Leo Campagna have a substantial commentary appearing in this week’s issue of Science (!) on avian supergenes, as exemplified by recent studies of ruffs and white-throated sparrows. Read it here: TaylorCampagnaScienceAvianSupergenes
Postdocs David Toews and Scott Taylor gave a riveting hour-long, interactive presentation to the Lab of Ornithology board on the genomics of speciation in warblers. Despite the highly technical nature of their topic, they were able to explain their studies and findings in language that was totally accessible to this…
Required reading on avian genomics… Marshaling a diverse group of co-authors, post-docs Dave Toews, Scott Taylor and Leonardo Campagna spearheaded the publication of a new synthetic review in the Auk: Ornithological Advances on genomic applications in avian systems. Lab PhD students Nicolas Mason and Petra Deane-Coe are also co-authors on…
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Seminar: Scott was in Washington DC this Friday to give a seminar as part of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Seminar Series. His seminar, titled “Chickadees and climate change: Ecological and evolutionary insights from common backyard birds” highlighted some of the work he has been doing…
Our crew at AOU: Scott, David, Leo, and Nick:
Postdoc David Toews gave his talk at AOU/COS on Extensive biogeographic introgression and weak genomic divergence between phenotypically distinct wood warblers. This collaborative project is using new genomic tools to better understand the dynamics of hybridization between golden-winged and blue-winged warblers. The new data confirm that hybridization is likely facilitating…
Postdoc Scott Taylor just gave a talk at AOU/COS on A comparative transcriptomic approach for understanding low hybrid fitness in chickadees. Summary: Comparing the transcriptomes of Black-capped, Carolina, and Mountain chickadees has provided support for our hypothesis that a breakdown in aerobic capacity in hybrid chickadees may be the underlying…
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.…
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…
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:
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…