Shawn Billerman on suture zones at AOS

Postdoc Shawn Billerman led off by talking about his studies of avian suture zones (locations where multiply hybrid zones overlap in space) on the first morning of the American Ornithological Society Conference. Shawn used models of past and present climate to show that different bird species respond in different ways to changing climate conditions, suggesting in turn that their different hybrid zones are mediated either by different environmental forces or by biotic interactions like sexual selection or competition.

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