Redpoll study hits the news, part II… Nick and Scott’s redpoll paper was paired with a nice commentary piece by Jan Lifjeld at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13244/full … “… Mason & Taylor (2015), using a large data set of genomewide SNPs, verify that [the redpolls] all belong to a single gene pool with…
Our first undergraduate genome is assembled… or since we study birds and not humans, maybe it is more correct to say that our first complete genome generated as part of an undergraduate thesis project is assembled. Congrats to Ben Van Doren, and thanks to Leo Campagna and Bronwyn Butcher, for…
Postdoc David Toews just had a nice commentary piece titled “A genomic guide to bird population history” published in Current Biology. From the Summary: “How species responded to the climatic oscillations during the past few million years is debated. A new study analyzing the genomes of 38 bird species finds…
Two members of our group–Postdoc Leo Campagna and PhD student Nick Mason–just returned from leading a special multi-day genomics course at the Universidad Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. Their course, taught in Spanish to a large and enthusiastic cadre of students and researchers, was an “Introducción a los…
Postdoc Scott Taylor has a new review article coming out in Trends in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology on how hybrid zones can serve as powerful windows on the ecological and evolutionary effects of climate change. Read the full paper here.
A warm welcome to Minene, who is visiting the Cornell through September and working in our lab on paternity analyses. Milene is a PhD candidate at the Universidade de Brasilia (Brazil), where her dissertation project is on the social behavior, evolution, and conservation of a (very cool! and beautiful!) endangered…
Congrats to first-year grad student Stepfanie Aguillon for being awarded a research grant from the Wilson Ornithological Society in support of her exploration of the Northern Flicker hybrid zone using genomic tools.
Nick Mason and Scott Taylor have an (I think) important new paper coming out in Molecular Ecology on the lack of genetic differentiation, but presence of gene expression differences, among redpoll finch “species.” The online-early version is here. Stay tuned for more posts on this study, complete with press releases.…
We are enjoying a research visit by Dr. Luciano Calderón, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Justus Liebig University (Giessen, Germany) where he works with Dr. Petra Quillfeldt. Luciano is originally from Argentina, where he did his PhD on cormorant evolution under Dr. Pablo Tubaro at the Argentine Museum of…
Graduate student Petra Deane just got the phone call from a program officer at the National Science Foundation: her Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant was ranked very highly and has been awarded full funding! Petra worked extremely hard on crafting a compelling proposal on genomic studies of adaptation and differentiation in…
Congratuations to Nick for garnering a substantial research grant from the Sustainable Biodiversity Fund of Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future to support his work on birds in the Imperial Valley of California.
No, just postdoc David Toews looking really excited about dropping off three lanes of warbler DNAs to the core genomics facility.
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…
Congratulations to Ben and his co-authors for their paper which just came out in the Auk. This is Ben’s first paper, and it results in part from his independent research as a high school student, before he even arrived at Cornell! Link to paper: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1642/AUK-13-260.1
Curatorial/Research Associate — Ornithology and Mammalogy Collections — Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology — Cornell University The Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates (CUMV) is seeking an ornithologist or mammalogist to curate and grow the collections through an organized program of accession involving Cornell students in all aspects of museum-based…
And one on a spectacular avian radiation too: Berv, J. S., and R. O. Prum. 2014. A comprehensive multilocus phylogeny of the Neotropical cotingas (Cotingidae, Aves) with a comparative evolutionary analysis of breeding system and plumage dimorphism and a revised phylogenetic classification. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
Benites P, Campagna L, Tubaro PL. 2014. Song-based species discrimination in a rapid Neotropical radiation of grassland seedeaters. Journal of Avian Biology. In press.
Kate is spending the Fall semester at sea, first collecting fishes aboard NOAA Ship H.B. Bigelow off the east coast of the USA, then traveling to the east coast of Australia to collect Pacific Ocean fish samples.
Nick Mason just returned from a successful research trip to the Imperial Valley of California, where he was studying local adaptation in horned larks.