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…
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…
Grad student Nick Mason is presenting his work today at the Evolution conference in Portland. This component of Nick’s dissertation looks at the surprisingly complex history of a group of seedeaters, and was done in collaboration with several colleagues from Mexico.
Postdoc Shawn Billerman is presenting his work at the Evolution conference in Portland. This component of Shawn’s study compares the climate niches of several Great Plains hybrid zones and tracks how they have changed over the past 60 years.
Postdoc David Toews gave a 5-minute blitz talk today at the Evolution conference on the topic of “How hybridization structures the genomes of related birds”.
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon and her collaborators presented a poster this week at the national Teaching as Research Conference. Their study used undergraduates on our Introductory Evolutionary Biology course to explore gender-based differences in student participation. Among the main take-aways: male and female students interact differently in the classroom, with…
Lab associate John Sullivan and undergraduate Madi Rich, along with colleagues, published a paper this month in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society that describes a ‘lost’ species of electric fish from the Ogooué River of Gabon. A nice write-up on this project is on the Cornell Chronicle site…
Grad student Petra Deane-Coe presented her dissertation seminar at the EEB departmental seminar slot on April 24th. The title of her talk was “Genomic signatures of recent adaptive divergence in the swamp sparrow (Melospiza georgiana)” and her seminar itself was a model of clarity and polished presentation, on top of…
Congratulations to grad student Nick Mason for being awarded a competitive NSF postdoctoral fellowship! This award will support Nick and his research starting in January 2018 as he transitions to working at UC Berkeley with ornithologist Raurie Bowie and others. The only down-side is that we will sorely miss Nick…
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…
Spurred by several exciting findings in warblers and canaries, current lab members Dave Toews and Natalie Hoffmeister, and lab alum Scott Taylor, reviewed what is known about the evolution and genetics of carotenoid processing in animals in a paper just published in Trends in Genetics. Animals cannot synthesize carotenoids and…
Graduate student Nick Mason recently published a paper with lead author Cissy Ballen to examine the effects of a campus support program for underrepresented minorities, first-generation students, and women in biology: the Biology Scholars Program (BSP) at Cornell. Together, Cissy and Nick found evidence of a disparity in preparedness among…
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…
Postdoc Jen Walsh and collaborators recently published a paper in Molecular Ecology investigating the genetic structure of the Saltmarsh-Nelson’s sparrow subspecies complex. Using a reduced representation sequencing approach coupled with morphological data, this study offers the first comprehensive view into subspecies variation within Saltmarsh and Nelson’s sparrows. The authors found…
Postdoc Jen Walsh and collaborators recently published a paper in Conservation Genetics investigating the temporal stability of the Saltmarsh-Nelson’s sparrow hybrid zone. By comparing genetic, morphological, and survey data from the same sites from two time periods (1998 and 2013), this study finds that Nelson’s Sparrows are moving further south…
The well-read Molecular Ecologist blog by Jeremy Yoder — which is loosely affiliated with the Molecular Ecology journal — just ran a really great commentary featuring a new paper posted on bioRxiv by grad student and lead author Stepfanie Aguillon. The title of the original paper is Deconstructing isolation-by-distance: the…
Postdoc Jen Walsh has been awarded a $12K seed grant in support of her work on the genomics of parallel adaptation in salt-marsh-dwelling sparrows. We are particularly grateful to the Cornell Center for Vertebrate Genomics for this specific award and more generally for creating an interactive network of scholars from…