Year: 2016
Jake presents at GSA meeting in Denver
Nick on AOS professional society trends and challenges

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…
Freshman advisees, class of 2020
Welcome to Cecilia Kopuchian and Darío Lijtmaer
Ornithology Seminar launched for 2016

Probably only at Cornell would you find a regular weekly audience of so many undergrads, grad students, postdocs, and others (71 people total, at yesterday’s first meeting) for a weekly research seminar on bird-related topics! The most recent version of this semester’s full schedule is included below: Ornithology…
Natalie’s paper on starling adaptation is out in Ecology Letters

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…
Happy SNEEB to all

Happy SNEEB to all: Our lab group joined with the Lab of Ornithology postdocs more generally to host the inaugural Fall semester SNEEB (the Friday social hour for departments with the prior names of Systematics and Ecology, Entomology, and Neurobiology and Behavior…) last evening. Took a little more pre-planning than…
Congrats to Ben and other NAOC award winners!

Congratulations to our Ben Van Doren for being awarded the WOS prize for best undergraduate research presentation at the North American Ornithological Conference this past week! And likewise congratulations to grad student Sahas Barve for winning one of the main grad student presentation awards, Teresa Pegan for placing highly in…
Wonderful to see so many colleagues old and new!

Wonderful to see so many colleagues old and new! It was fantastic to see so many alumni — former Cornell students, past lab group members, former visiting scientists, field course students, academic advisees … all of you! — at the North American Ornithological Conference this past week! You can read…
Jake brings home the NAOC talks

Jake brings home the NAOC talks: Grad student Jake Berv was the closer in our long series of presentations at the NAOC meeting that ended yesterday. Talking in the very last session of the conference, Jake presented on his deep-time comparisons of diversification patterns in the avian Tree-of-Life, and on…
Petra Deane-Coe on Swamp Sparrow adaptation

Petra Deane-Coe on Swamp Sparrow adaptation: PhD student Petra Deane-Coe gave a clear and animated talk on her innovative explorations of adaptive divergence in swamp sparrows that reside in different marsh habitats. Part of Petra’s presentation involved an in-depth comparison of differentiation as measured through complementary metrics for comparing genome-wide…
Shawn Billerman on sapsuckers at NAOC
Nick Mason is everywhere at the NAOC

Nick Mason is everywhere at the NAOC! As in past years, it seems like PhD student Nick Mason was everywhere at the North American Ornithological Conference; in fact I’m quite sure that no other student at the 2000+ meeting had this same degree of multifaceted contribution. Nick was accordingly awarded…
Scott Taylor on chickadee hybridization and fitness
A new ‘grandchild’ of the lab!
Stepfanie Aguillon on Northern Flicker genomics

Stepfanie on Northern Flicker genomics: at the NAOC conference a day ago, PhD student Stepfanie Aguillon presented on her ongoing field and genomic studies of the great plains hybrid zone between yellow-shafted and red-shafted flickers. Even though these two forms are distinct in many plumage traits even beyond their namesake…
Leo on the genomics of a sexually selected avian radiation

Leo on the genomics of a sexually selected avian radiation: Research Associate Leo Campagna led off our lab’s presentations at the North American Ornithological Conference via a talk on his ongoing work on seedeater genomics. The story of this avian radiation just keeps getting better and better as Leo delves…
Natalie Hoffmeister on starling evo-ecology

Natalie Hoffmeister on starling evo-ecology: PhD student Natalie Hoffmeister gave a professional and polished talk today at the NAOC on how endocrine receptors vary genetically in response to selection resulting from environmental variation. Hard stuff to describe to a general audience of ornithologists who aren’t specialists in either of these…
Jen Walsh on saltmarsh sparrow hybridization

Jen Walsh on saltmarsh sparrow hybridization: continuing the series of excellent (I’m biased, but they really have all been excellent) talks by our lab group at the NAOC meeting, postdoc Dr. Jen Walsh presented today on her PhD studies of the relative fitness of saltmarsh sparrows, nelson’s sparrows, and their…