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…
A paper resulting from Benjamin Van Dooren’s undergraduate honors thesis is out in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology where is is accompanied by a great commentary by Reto Buri. Ben did this honors project in our lab and went on to receive a Marshall Scholarship for his PhD at…
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…
Leo Campagna gave a talk today on the genomic architecture of phenotypic differences in capuchino seedeaters. The study (recently published in Science Advances) shows that there are very small genetic differences among these species and that they tend to center around regions that are likely to control the expression of…
Catalina Palacios, a PhD student from Daniel Cadena’s lab group in Colombia, is finishing her six-month research visit by talking about the genomic results from her study of two hummingbird species. Catalina’s work shows how whole genome sequencing can help distinguish hummingbird species that resisted delimitation with other techniques (mtdna…
We had a great semester of engagement with lots of Cornell undergraduates this Spring! In addition to the many less formal forms of instruction and mentoring to which everybody contributes, people from our group who were involved in official teaching and advising this semester included: Stepfanie Aguillion: Stepfanie led the…
Leo Campagna was the featured presenter at the venerable Nuttall Ornithological Club’s April meeting in Cambridge, MA. His talk “The genetic basis of plumage differences in the rapid capuchino seedeater radiation” summarized results from the last few years of work on those birds. His study has identified key areas of…
Postdocs Jen Walsh and David Toews and Research Associate Leo Campagna are all currently presenting posters and talks at the Gordon Speciation Conference in Tuscany. They were also invited to a pre-conference seminar highlighting cool young investigators. This small conference, with approximately 120 attendees, is focused on the frontiers of…
We are back from two exciting weeks in Patagonia where Irby and Leo have led for the second consecutive year the field-course portion of “BioEE2525/BioEE2526 Ecology and Conservation of Wildlife in the Neotropics”. Together with co-leaders Roxanne Razavi, David Toews, Natalia García and a group of 12 Cornell students, we…
Our lab group enjoyed an all-day retreat today, with a break to attend the Lab of Ornithology holiday party. We covered lots of ground in discussing research, outreach, and professional development topics. But perhaps the most important outcome of the sillier part of the late afternoon was the anointing of…
Visiting scientist Luciano Caldarón, our own Leo Campagna, and a cadre of collaborators just published a paper showing that the European Turtle Dove shows genetic evidence of a fluctuating demography over time, and is currently undergoing a shrinking phase. The combined effect of demography, habitat destruction and hunting is causing…
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…
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…
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…
Evolution2016: Recent graduate Ben Van Doren presented a poster at the Evolution Conference on his studies of comparative genomics in the stonechat complex.
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…
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,…
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.
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…