Sapayoas are cool: a group of Cornell students including current senior Ben Van Doren and junior Sarah Djelski are getting some nice attention for their paper on the biology of the enigmatic Sapayoa, a little-known bird of Panama and northern South America that turns out to be the only representative…
Congrats to two lab group alumni: two students whom we knew through all four years of their Cornell experience are heading off to work on birds via their new PhD programs in the Fall. Kathryn Grabenstein will be at the University of Colorado in the lab of our own Dr.…
New paper on goose phylogeography and conservation: In this paper, visiting researcher Cecilia Kopuchian (Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral, Argentina) and Leo Campagna from our lab use genomic data to explore the history of colonization of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands by the Upland Goose (Chloephaga picta) and the Ruddy-headed Goose…
We are pleased to welcome back Milene Gaiotti, a visiting researcher from the University of Brasilia, to continue her genetic work here on the extremely endangered Araripe manakin.
Grants to Grads: congratulations to graduate student Natalie Hoffmeister for a substantial travel award from the Einaudi Center for International Studies for her forthcoming pilot study of local adaptation in Argentinian seabirds, and similar congratulations to graduate student Stepfanie Aguillon for a substantial Peacock Award from the Garden Society of…
New paper on sparrow hybridization by postdoc Jen Walsh: Jen just published a neat paper from her PhD work at UNH; study looks at the genetic interplay between hybridizing Saltmarsh and Nelson’s Sparrows and finds evidence for neutral diffusion of some regions; strong selection and local adaptation in other genomic…
Cornell article on our Patagonia field course: http://spring2016.periodicals.cals.cornell.edu/students/new-ecology-course-takes-students-patagonia
Shawn Billerman is the recipient of an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship and we are all accordingly very excited about his forthcoming return to Cornell! In the Fall Shawn will begin working here on the genomics of hybrids zones in the Great Plains, based in part on the CUMV’s large collection of…
Congratulations to Dustin Rubenstein, who was just awarded tenure at Columbia University! Dustin is one our our group’s longest-term colleagues and alumni, dating to his PhD years here at Cornell when we worked together on starling evolution, the Kenya field course, and much more. Here is a throw-back photo of…
Art, Science, and Writing in and about the Galapagos: we just returned from the field component of our three-class curriculum for freshmen that uses the Galapagos Islands as a linked framework for training in writing, evolutionary biology, and artistic expression. My thanks to the course leaders — Liz, Nick, Scott,…