Nick Mason’s talk at AOU/COS: Grad student Nick Mason talked today about his comparative work on avian vocalizations, in a talk titled Evolutionary rate heterogeneity among learned and innate vocalizations across two prominent clades of Neotropical passerines (Thraupidae, Furnariidae). Those are tanagers and woodcreepers to those of you who might…
Nick Mason is everywhere at AOU/COS…: Grad student Nick Mason is engaged in a busy AOU/COS conference. Yesterday he led a workshop for 25 people on using R (the field’s main statistics+ programming resource) in Ornithology, today he is giving a research talk, tomorrow he is MCing the famous evening…
Congrats to Becca Brunner: UC Berkeley Hellman Fellow. Congratulations to Becca as she heads off to start her PhD at Berkeley, where she has now been named a Hellman Graduate Fellow (and with baobab trees in the background, she definitely wins ‘coolest photo’ in their Hellman Fellow press release)
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.
Lots and lots and lots of nuthatches: Graduate student Esther Niemasik (from Janis Dickinson’s lab) just completed a month-long genotyping marathon in which she generated parentage data for more than 1400 brown-headed nuthatches from her field site in North Carolina. Analyses are forthcoming, but Esther will know soon whether these…
Postdoc Leo Campagna’s new paper on dissecting the complex demographic and phylogenetic history of the Sporophila seedeaters is just out in Molecular Ecology. In addition to revealing new insights into this avian rapid radiation, Leo and his collaborators also make some useful but sobering points about the potential for spurious…
Luciano Calderón at Argentina Evolution conference: visiting Lab researcher Luciano Calderón is talking today at the first-ever Argentine Evolution meeting (I Reunion Argentina de Biología Evolutiva, in Cordoba, Argentina) about the population genomics of turtle doves across Europe. Luciano visited Cornell in February and worked with postdoc Leo Campagna to…
Scott’s cover article in TREE on climate change and hybrid zones: Postdoc Scott Taylor’s synthetic review of how hybrid zones can be powerful tools for tracking climate change is featured on the cover of the current issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution! Taylor SA, Larson EL, Harrison RG. 2015.…
David’s talk at Evolution: genomics of hybridizing warblers. Postdoc David Toews’ talk at the Evolution conference in Brazil covered his ongoing work on the hybridization genomics of the Myrtle and Audubon’s forms of Yellow-rumped Warblers, and on admixture mapping that is revealing interesting candidate genes for traits that differ between…
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…
Leo’s talk at Evolution: genomics of an avian radiation: Leo presented his most recent explorations into genome-wide patterns of divergence in Sporophila seed-eaters using analytical methods pioneered by our collaborators Ilan Gronau and Adam Siepel. This avian radiation is a wonderful test-case of (very) low genetic divergence among a suite…
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 alumnae Marjorie Weber (at right) and (again to) Katie Wagner (at left)! These two past members of our greater lab group are the recipients of the two awards for exceptional early career contributions being given this week at the joint conference in Guarujá, Brazil: Marjorie is this year’s…
Sebastian Cabanne at Evolution: ddRAD studies of Neotropical forest birds. At the Evolution conference in Brazil, our visiting collaborator from Argentina — Sebastian Cabanne — presented his studies of divergence and gene flow among populations of several Neotropical birds. Some of the underlying data were generated by Sebastian and Leo…
Graduate students Ben Freeman and Nick Mason have a new paper out in PLOS ONE: Freeman BG, Mason NA (2015) The Geographic Distribution of a Tropical Montane Bird Is Limited by a Tree: Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) and Colombian Oaks (Quercus humboldtii) in the Northern Andes. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0128675.…
107 years of avian ecology: (from Irby) I’m enjoying a double pilgrimage to two of the most historically important touch-stones of avian ecology in North America. Earlier in the week I was in Acadia National Park in Maine, where Bik Wheeler (a graduate student at nearby College of the Atlantic)…
Stepfanie on dispersal genomics at Brazil Evolution conference: grad student Stepfanie Aguillon just presented her work on the dispersal genomics of Florida Scrub-jays at the Evolution meeting in Brazil. This project was a robust ‘rotation’ endeavor that Stepfanie motivated during this first year for her at Cornell: Title: Genomic consequences…
These birds aren’t as different as they appear …. the first in our lab group’s series of talks at the Evolution meeting in Brazil:
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon has a new paper out that is an extension of her MS research with Rene Duckworth: Duckworth, R.A. and S.M. Aguillon. 2015. Eco-evolutionary dynamics: investigating multiple causal pathways linking changes in behavior, population density and natural selection. Journal of Ornithology. Abstract: Correlations between population density, natural…
Katie Wagner wins the Dobzhansky Prize! Warmest of congratulations to lab group alumna Dr. Katie Wagner for being recognized at the highest level by her community of scientific colleagues. The Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution “to recognize the accomplishments and future…