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…
Big congratulations to Jake Berv for the news that his NSF doctoral dissertation improvement grant has been recommended for funding! Jake’s proposal is titled Surviving the K/Pg Mass Extinction: the genome as a life history character in birds and it includes innovative empirical and modeling approaches applied to the avian…
Postdoc Shawn Billerman has a new paper out in The Auk based on his PhD work with his advisor Matt Carling (himself a former postdoc here) at the University of Wyoming. The punch-line of this study has to do with their finding that Red-naped Sapsuckers are more aggressive towards simulated…
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…
On November 12 Jake Berv gave the Larry King Memorial Lecture to a sold out audience at the Rochester Academy of Sciences Fall Paper Session, held at Roberts Wesleyan College. Jake’s lecture, entitled, “Surviving the Mass Extinction: The Amazing Story of Bird Recovery and Radiation after the End-Cretaceous Catastrophe” focused…
This week Jake Berv presented his work on the avian mass extinction at the K/Pg boundary to the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado. Jake’s recent work has focused on how genomes evolve in response to mass extinctions that select for life history traits. This was our lab’s first-ever…
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…
Jake brings home the NAOC talks: Grad student Jake Berv was the closer in our long series of presentations at the NAOC meeting that ended yesterday. Talking in the very last session of the conference, Jake presented on his deep-time comparisons of diversification patterns in the avian Tree-of-Life, and on…
Evolution2016: Jake Berv gave a talk entitled “The genomic signature of the lilliput effect across the K/PG mass extinction” at the Evolution conference in Austin.
Congrats to grad student Jake Berv who advanced to PhD candidacy today by passing his qualifying exam (which we call the “A” exam here). Next time you see him, be sure to ask Jake about the major constituents of ‘Cole’s Law.’
Our lab group was fantastically well represented in a series of 35 short but powerful presentations by undergraduates and graduate students at the Lab of Ornithology Fall board meeting, which was also part of the Lab’s celebration of its 100th birthday. Thanks and congratulations to everyone involved for doing such…
Congratulations to grad student Jake Berv for being awarded a Graduate Student Research Award from the Society of Systematic Biologists in support of Jake’s studies of the phylogeographic history of various Neotropical birds.
Here is just a small sample of links to third-party commentaries and articles on Jake’s avian phylogeny study: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature15638.html http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/07/us-science-birds-idUSKCN0S124U20151007 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature15638.html http://www.voanews.com/content/scientists-unveil-comprehensive-bird-family-tree/2995915.html
Congratulations to grad student Jake Berv and his co-authors for their important paper on the avian tree of life, which came out this week in Nature! The paper is open-access and the link is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature15697.html A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing Although reconstruction of…
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.
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…
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…
Congratulations to grads Stepfanie Aguillon, Jake Berv, and Nick Mason, all of whom were awarded research grants from the CALS Mellon awards program in support of their different projects.
Congratulations to grads Stepfanie Aguillon and Jake Berv, who were both awarded significant travel grant to participate in NSF-supported workshops hosted by the Society of Systematic Biologists at this summer’s conference in Guaruja, Brazil.
Graduate student Jake Berv is a co-author on a paper just out in The Auk that argues for full species status for the population of the Bahama Woodstar (a hummingbird) from the Inagua islands in the Bahamas: Divergence in morphology, calls, song, mechanical sounds, and genetics supports species status for…