At the IOC in Vancouver, Shawn presented a portion of his postdoctoral work from the lab, describing how genetic data were generated from museum specimens using the HyRAD protocol. These data were used to characterize a hybrid zone between Eastern and Spotted Towhees, which showed extensive genetic introgression and low…
At the IOC this week PhD candidate Natalie Hoffmeister presented some of her work on the population genomics of European (Common) starlings. Her poster covered 1) genome-wide differentiation within North American starlings, and 2) evidence for local adaptation within starling invasions in Australia and the U.S. This work is part…
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon participated in the first ever general ornithology twitter conference (#BOU17TC), organized by the British Ornithologists’ Union. She had the challenge of translating her recent paper on spatial genetic patterns in Florida Scrub-Jays into 6 (very short) tweets. Twitter conferences are fairly new, but a great avenue…
PhD student Jake Berv is in Puetro Iguazú, Argentina, at the Ornithological Congress of the Americas this week, presenting his work on the population genomics of the white crowned manakin. Jake’s work on this taxon takes advantage of new techniques being optimized in the Fuller lab to understand diversification in…
Warmest of congratulations to grad student Nick Mason for ending his final AOS conference as a student on a high note by winning an AOS Council Presentation Award for his very well-received talk on “Song Evolution, Vocal Learning, and Speciation in Passerine Birds.” Way to go, Nick!
The Cornell undergraduate contingent continued a tradition of performing impressively at this year’s AOS conference. Among the highlights was the crushing victory of the 2/3 Cornell undergraduate team (plus one undergrad from that four-letter-word-staring-with-Y Ivy…guess they know a bit about birds over in New Haven) in the venerable quiz bowl…
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,…
Postdoc David Toews gave one of the very last talks at the American Ornithological Society conference today, in which he explored how the costs of migration might limit the western breeding ranges of warblers that next in the boreal zone of Canada and Alaska.
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon’s newest paper is now out in the journal PLOS Genetics — where it was released just 1.5 hours before she gave a talk on it at the AOS conference at Michigan State. The paper titled “Deconstructing isolation-by-distance: The genomic consequences of limited dispersal” shows how the…
Stepfanie Aguillon presented yesterday at AOS on a “side” (but major) research project on limited dispersal and isolation-by-distance in Florida Scrub-Jays. Stepfanie started this as a rotation project when she first arrived at Cornell in collaboration with Nancy Chen. The paper is available today on PLOS Genetics (http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006911). This study…
Research Associate Leo Campagna presented today at AOS on his ongoing exploration of the genes that control plumage — and speciation — in the capuccino seadeater finches. Among the take-home messages of his talk was the finding that although these species have some commonalities in the genes that control their…
Postdoc Jen Walsh talked on the first morning of the AOS conference about her ongoing work on the hybridization genomics of Nelson’s and Saltmarsh Sparrows. Among Jen’s findings is strong evidence for the transfer of adaptive genes from Saltmarsh Sparrows (which have a long evolutionary history of adaptation to the…
Postdoc Shawn Billerman led off by talking about his studies of avian suture zones (locations where multiply hybrid zones overlap in space) on the first morning of the American Ornithological Society Conference. Shawn used models of past and present climate to show that different bird species respond in different ways…
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon sent along this link to where her poster is featured on a site about scientific poster design and communication. I’m flagging it here both because the expert at the site found only a few things to tweak on Stepfanie’s work, and because the site itself is…
Be sure to catch this presentation if you are going to be at AOS in East Lansing next week! 😉
The current members of our lab group who are at the Evolution meeting in Portland this week: Leo Campagna, Nick Mason, Gavin Leighton, David Toews, Petra Deane-Coe, Shawn Billerman, Jen Walsh, Stepfanie Aguillon, and Eliot Miller. Add in a few talks by researchers from other countries who visited our lab…
Graduate student Stepfanie Aguillon presented a poster at the Evolution conference on her genomic investigations into the hybrid zone of yellow-shafted x red-shafted flickers. Contrary to all previous forays on this topic, Stepfanie is finding markers that differentiate these forms and that may be associated with their color differences and…
Postdoc Jen Walsh just presented at the Evolution conference in Portland on her ongoing studies of adaptation and gene flow among Saltmarsh and Nelson’s Sparrows.
Postdoc Dave Toews gave a second talk today at the Evolution conferenece, in which he discussed cases of mitochondrial and nuclear discordance in warblers: In yellow-rumped warblers where mitochondrial DNA has introgressed between two forms, and in golden and blue-winged warblers, where mitochondrial DNA is distinct in the face of…
Graduate student Petra Deane-Coe presented a talk at the Evolution conference today in Portland. Petra covered her studies of local adaptation in Swamp Sparrows and her careful exploration of its underlying genetic basis, based on comparisons among whole-genome datasets from sparrows that are adapted to saline marshes versus others that…