Congratulations to Ton Schat, husband of our long-term lab manager emerita Laura Stenzler, for being awarded the 2015 Ezra Technology Innovator Award for his development of a vaccine now given to billions (!!!) of chickens every year: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/10/poultry-vaccine-nets-ezra-technology-innovator-award
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:…
Leo Campagna and I are finishing up our trip to Patagonia, where we are setting up logistics for our forthcoming field course and generally having a great time with both wildlife and Leo’s friends and family here in his home town of Puerto Madryn. Right whales, elephant seals, guanacos, grisson,…
Irby appointed as Fuller Professor of Ornithology: This is old news in some ways, but the Cornell Chronicle just ran an article about the new Fuller Chair of Ornithology: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/10/fuller-gift-keeps-lab-ornithology-soaring. I’m very proud to be associated in this role with Larry and Nancy Fuller, who have long been such staunch…
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…
How to prepare for a trip to Patagonia: (1) get Leo (from Argentina) to agree to be master chef/jefe de asado; (2) obtain two sheep; (3) watch Leo chase sheep around pasture; (4) humanely dispatch and partly deconstruct said sheep; (4) invite the lab group plus 100 other people over…
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…
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Seminar: Scott was in Washington DC this Friday to give a seminar as part of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Seminar Series. His seminar, titled “Chickadees and climate change: Ecological and evolutionary insights from common backyard birds” highlighted some of the work he has been doing…