Our entire crew at the Evolution 2017 meeting in Portland

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…

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Catalina Palacios at Evolution 2017

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…

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Our Spring Semester 2017 classes are over…

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…

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Lucky postdocs in Italy for the Gordon Speciation Conference

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…

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Experimental design, biostats, … and penguins!

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…

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Our lab group December retreat

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…

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New paper on turtle dove evolution

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…

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Happy SNEEB to all

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…

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Leo on capuchino seedeaters at Evolution2016

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…

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New paper on goose phylogeography and conservation

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…

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