Scott Taylor on chickadee hybridization and fitness: Dr. Scott Taylor, a former postdoc in our lab (since he is now four days into his new job as a professor at U Colorado!) gave a detailed symposium talk here at the NAOC on the breakdown of metabolic pathways (and the underlying genetics) when species of chickadees produce hybrid offspring. Scott started working on chickadee genomics right when he first came to Cornell (and in collaboration with Bob Curry at Villanova–thanks Bob!), and it is wonderful to see the many directions Scott has taken that system over the subsequent years. Scott’s talk here notably linked a big-picture ‘process’ synthesis on hybridization and reproductive isolation with a detailed, functional investigation of the ‘mechanisms’ of how species become incompatible. It will be fun to see what new discoveries Scott makes on this system now that he has the mountain/black-capped hybrid zone basically right outside in his new 
Colorado backyard!
