From July 8-13, graduate student Jake Berv attended the annual meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) in Yokohama, Japan. The 2018 meeting celebrated 50 years of one of the founding ideas of molecular population genetics, The Neural Theory. Jake’s abstract was accepted for oral presentation in…
Stepfanie recently completed three very successful weeks of fieldwork in Nebraska and Colorado with Vanya Rohwer, Tayler Brooks, and Augie Kramer to continue the CUMV’s work on the Great Plains hybrid zones. She has since extracted DNA, prepped, and sequenced 24 of the hybrid flickers for use in her next…
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon authored a new paper in The Auk assessing the level of genetic differentiation between red-shafted, yellow-shafted, and gilded flickers. Up until now it was impossible to consistently differentiate these birds using genetics. Stepfanie looked at genomic patterns across much of the North American range and…
After a busy four weeks in Ithaca, Belén who started with extractions of ~120 DNA samples has just one tube containing her ddRAD-seq library to be sequenced! Belén was visiting the Fuller Evolutionary Biology Lab as part of our International Scholar Research Support Program (ISRSP) and we wish Belén safe…
Postdoc Jen Walsh authored a new paper in the Auk looking at the role of divergent mating strategies, reproductive success, and compatibility in maintaining the Saltmarsh-Nelson’s sparrow hybrid zone. Looking at nesting and paternity data for 342 sparrows of both pure and hybrid origin, she found that F1-F2 hybrid males…
The Cornell graduate school just posted an nice article about this year’s EEB graduate student diversity preview weekend, which was co-led by Stepfanie Aguillon from our lab group. This event is a stellar example of the graduate students self-organizing to work together in a targeted, highly effective way to increase…
Cornell researchers past and present were everywhere in this year’s presentations at the American Ornithological Society meeting in Tuscon, including these strong contributions by current or very recent members of our own core lab group: Graduate student Stepfanie Aguillon led off with her strong talk on how “genomic data provide…
Warmest of congratulations to recently degreed Dr. Nick Mason for being recognized with the 2018 Marion Jenkins Award by the AOS! This award recognizes “an early or mid career ornithologist who has performed continued extensive service to the society, which includes holding elected offices but emphasizes volunteered contributions and committee…
We were surprised and delighted to find that our 2015 phylogeny paper in the Auk has won the first Brina Kessel Award, which will be given every two years to recognize “an outstanding paper published in the four preceding years in The Auk.” A fun element of the backstory is…
Congratulations to Dr. Jen Walsh, a postdoc in our lab group, for being voted in as an Elective Member of the American Ornithological Society. This professional honor is based on having made “significant contributions to ornithology,” which Jen has certainly done through her large body of research and through mentoring…
Congratulations to Dr. Scott Taylor, until recently a postdoc in our lab and now an assistant professor at U. Colorado, for winning the 2018 Ned K. Johnson Young Investigator Award, which recognizes “outstanding and promising work by a researcher early in his or her career in any field of ornithology.” Scott’s…
Many members of our greater lab group spent yesterday birding in and around Sierra Vista in far southern Arizona. After enjoying Painted Redstarts, Arizona Woodpeckers, Buff-breasted Flycatchers, Vermilion Flycatchers, and dozens of other great birds, we gathered for the afternoon at the Aguillon family home for a wonderful BBQ, with…
Irby Lovette, Natalie Hoffmeister, and Liz Clayton Fuller just returned from teaching the field component of our three-course Galápagos curriculum, now in its 7th year. This year’s trip seemed to be characterized by sexual selection in action: giant tortoises loudly mating, blue-footed boobies dancing, marine iguana females battling over nesting…
A warm welcome to Dr. Natalia Garcia, who is joining our lab for six months as a postdoc. Natalia is broadly interested in the evolution of acoustic and visual communication in birds, and she has studied the effect of morphological constraints in the evolution of communication signals and the evolutionary…
Postdoc Jen Walsh co-authored a new paper in the Auk with collaborators from the University of New Hampshire looking at adaptive sex ratio manipulation in Saltmarsh Sparrows. The authors determined the sex of 990 offspring from 370 nests and characterized variation in site- and population-level sex ratios. They found no…
Irby Lovette just began a three-year term as the incoming Director of the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates, the home of the research collections that are co-located with the Lab in the Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. The CUMV is small in terms of staff — just three additional professionals…
Undergraduate Chloe Mikles prepared and submitted her first ddRAD-seq library for sequencing. It’s crazy to go from so many blood samples and DNA extractions to 8 index groups and finally to one tiny tube for sequencing. Looking forward to lots of data to analyze!
Congratulations to graduate student Stepfanie Aguillon for being awarded the 2018 Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. This Cornell-wide award recognizes “demonstrated excellence and dedication in instructional responsibilities to students at Cornell University, thereby enhancing undergraduate and graduate education at Cornell.” Stepfanie has been deeply engaged in teaching evolutionary biology…
Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon participated in the first ever general ornithology twitter conference (#BOU17TC), organized by the British Ornithologists’ Union. She had the challenge of translating her recent paper on spatial genetic patterns in Florida Scrub-Jays into 6 (very short) tweets. Twitter conferences are fairly new, but a great avenue…
Lots of familiar faces in this photo of 15 (of 24 total at the moment!) Lab of Ornithology postdocs who recently gathered to help welcome newcomer Ryan Germain: