Lab of Ornithology postdoc (and first author) Rusty Ligon and grad student Nick Mason are part of a team that just published a neat paper on the evolution of plumage coloration among finches: Ligon, R. A., Simpson, R. K., Mason, N. A., Hill, G. E., & McGraw, K. J. (2016).…
I’m tardy to post here that postdoc Dave Toews recently published an ornithologically quite noteworthy paper in the Auk: Ornithological Advances from his PhD work at the University of British Columbia with Darren Irwin. Their study found evidence of strongly heterogeneous genomic divergence between a number of groups in the…
Nick on AOS professional society trends and challenges: Graduate student Nick Mason is the lead author on a paper out today that reports on a wide spectrum of trends and challenges related to membership in the American Ornithological Society. This survey was a major undertaking, the analyses are robust, and…
Grad student Natalie Hofmeister and former lab member Dustin Rubenstein just published a new paper in Ecology Letters on adaptation to environmental variability in African starlings. Natalie and Dustin show that variability in the environment of African starlings influences patterns of substitution in the glucocorticoid receptor, which allows organisms to…
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…
Our new Handbook of Bird Biology is here! This week we received the very first advance copies of our new comprehensive textbook of ornithology, just in time to share it with the world at the big NAOC bird conference in August. This means that it will be available from booksellers…
Congrats to grad student Nick Mason, lead author Kelly Zamudio, and former EEB PhD graduate Rayna Bell on their paper in the most recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Zamudio, K. R., Bell, R. C., & Mason, N. A. (2016). Phenotypes in phylogeography: Species’ traits, environmental…
Kudos to grad student Nick Mason, his MS advisor Kevin Burns, and collaborator Phil Unitt for doing the hard work of turning their molecular phylogeny of the entire tanager radiation into a series of formal recommendations on the taxonomic nomenclature of this beautiful but complicated group. This is the kind…
Sapayoas are cool: a group of Cornell students including current senior Ben Van Doren and junior Sarah Djelski are getting some nice attention for their paper on the biology of the enigmatic Sapayoa, a little-known bird of Panama and northern South America that turns out to be the only representative…
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…
New paper on sparrow hybridization by postdoc Jen Walsh: Jen just published a neat paper from her PhD work at UNH; study looks at the genetic interplay between hybridizing Saltmarsh and Nelson’s Sparrows and finds evidence for neutral diffusion of some regions; strong selection and local adaptation in other genomic…
New Ornithology textbook coming this summer… just got the final cover proofs for our massively revised Handbook of Bird Biology, along with an official publication date of August 1, 2016. Very happy to finally be able to say with confidence: look for it soon in bookstores near you…! …
John Sullivan discovers and describes a new genus. John is a research associate in the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates who has spent a lot of time in our lab over the years sequencing fish samples, and even more time in the field in many parts of Africa surveying freshwater fish…
Dispatch in Current Biology by Leo Campagna: A review of the work by Tuttle et al. (2016) Current Biology on the origin and possible fate of a fascinating supergene that determines the coloration and mating behavior of a widespread North American bird. Accompanying artwork is by Liz Fuller, a Bartels…
Congratulations to course organizers/leaders Ben Freeman and Alexa Class Freeman, and to the student co-authors, for the first of several scientific papers arising out of their Spring 2015 Advanced Tropical Ornithology course. Back at the curriculum review stage there was some healthy push-back when peer-reviewed student publications were suggested as…
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
Grad Student Ben Freeman, a member of our lab group who is advised by John Fitzpatrick, has a new paper out in American Naturalist entitled Competitive interactions upon secondary contact drive elevational divergence in tropical birds. The popular summary from the AmNat site: Why do related tropical montane birds live…
Congrats to Emma, Dan, and Mike for having their study (and their really angry-looking fairy-wren) featured on the most recent cover of Evolution! Greig, E. I., Baldassarre, D. T. and Webster, M. S. (2015), Differential rates of phenotypic introgression are associated with male behavioral responses to multiple signals. Evolution, 69:…
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…
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