Lovette Lab

Lovette Lab

Current faculty, staff, grads, and postdocs whose home-base is our lab. Many other undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and visitors are valuable participants in our greater lab group.

Hybridization and Speciation

We use genomic tools to explore evolutionary changes in chickadees and many other groups of birds.

Comparative Studies

We generate phylogenies and use them for comparative studies of the evolution, ecology, and behavior of warblers, swallows, starlings, mockingbirds, and various other groups of organisms.

Field Courses

We offer international field courses for Cornell students and trips for Cornell Lab of Ornithology members

Understanding Evolutionary Radiations

We explore patterns of evolutionary differentiation in rapidly radiating groups, including warblers, Sporophila seedeaters, Australian skinks, and others.

NEWS

Our 2018 South American Visitors

Many International visitors from Argentina, Brazil and Chile came to the Fuller Evolutionary biology lab in 2018 to work on the genomics of birds. These studies included phylogeographic projects, genotype phenotype associations and landscape genetics. For more information on Pablo Lavina, Belén Bukowski, Cecilia Estalles, Nicolás Lois, Ramiro Arrieta, Juan…

Natalie invades Australia

PhD student Natalie Hofmeister visited her collaborators Lee Ann Rollins and Katarina Stuart at the University of New South Wales in Sydney in October and November 2018. Together, they’re working on several projects to compare European starling invasions across continents: stay tuned for the fruits of this research in 2019!…

Amelia wins best presentation award

Congratulations to Amelia Demery for winning the ‘best presentation by a first-year graduate student’ award at the 2018 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department Symposium!

Daniel’s new MolEcol paper on chromosomal inversions in an Australian finch hybrid zone

A paper lead-authored by postdoc Daniel Hooper is out now in Molecular Ecology where you can read about how ‘Sex Chromosome Inversions Enforce Reproductive Isolation Across An Avian Hybrid Zone’. This paper, focused on the hybrid zone in northern Australia between subspecies of the long-tailed finch (Poephila acuticauda), is one…

Congratulations to Dave Toews on Excellence Award!

Postdoc Dave Toews recently received recognition from the Cornell Office of Postdoctoral Studies. Dave received the 2018 ‘Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring’, in recognition of his work in leading the “Current Topics in Non-Model Genomics” discussion group, and his role in undergraduate education.

Cornell Chronicle on our lyrebird NSF project

Were Australia’s lyrebirds the first ‘meme generators’? By Pat Leonard September 17, 2018 Australia’s Superb Lyrebird – the most astonishing animal mimic in the world – has been communicating with memes through song and dance for millions of years. “These days we usually think of memes as bits of culture…

Nati on sparrow songs at the International Ornithological Congress

Postdoc Natalia Garcia presented the first results of a project studying vocal performance in the Rufous-collared Sparrow (Zonotrichia capensis). This species shows vocal dialects that, contrary to what happens in other Zonotrichia species, seem to be shaped by habitat type: their song trills are slower in closed environments and are…

Shawn on towhee hybrids at the International Ornithological Congress

At the IOC in Vancouver, Shawn presented a portion of his postdoctoral work from the lab, describing how genetic data were generated from museum specimens using the HyRAD protocol. These data were used to characterize a hybrid zone between Eastern and Spotted Towhees, which showed extensive genetic introgression and low…

Signals of Adaptive Introgression Between Saltmarsh and Nelson’s Sparrows

Postdoc Jen Walsh is the lead on a new study published in Evolution that leverages whole genome data from Saltmarsh and Nelson’s sparrows to investigate the genomic landscape of introgression between these species. By comparing populations in allopatry and sympatry, Jen’s paper shows that contemporary introgression is shaping the genomic…

Natalie on starlings at International Ornithological Congress

At the IOC this week PhD candidate Natalie Hoffmeister presented some of her work on the population genomics of European (Common) starlings. Her poster covered 1) genome-wide differentiation within North American starlings, and 2) evidence for local adaptation within starling invasions in Australia and the U.S. This work is part…

Dave on warblers at International Ornithological Congress

At the IOC this week Postdoc Dave Toews presented new golden-winged and blue-winged warbler genomic results. Data come from over 100 re-seqeunced genomes sampled across the range of both groups. He discussed finding some genomic ‘weirdos’ in Appalachia that appear to ‘genomic relicts’, somehow avoiding admixture. He also announced recruitment…

Really Big News about our Littlest Lab Group Member!

Enormous congratulations to postdoc Jen Walsh and her husband Marc on the birth of their first child, Griffin Leo Emond!!!! We are greatly looking forward to having this very cute little guy join our lab group events when the time comes, and wish Jen and Marc all the best as they experience the innumerable joys of parenthood!

Jake wins SSB Publisher’s Award for Best Paper!

Congratulations to PhD candidate Jake Berv for winning the 2017 Publisher’s Award for the best paper authored by a student in the journal Systematic Biology. Jake won this honor for his paper on the Genomic Signature of an Avian Lilliput Effect across the K-Pg Extinction, and the award was presented…

Evolution 2018 in Montpellier!

The second joint congress of Evolutionary Biology started in Montpellier, France. This meeting brings together the European Society for Evolutionary Biology with the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Society of Systematic Biologists. On the first day, graduate student Jacob Berv gave a presentation…

NSF, Lyrebirds, ComicCon, and Fantastic Beasts!

We think it is really, really neat that our colleagues at the National Science Foundation are featuring our newly funded project on cultural and genetic evolution in lyrebirds at their exhibit on real-life “Fantastic Beasts and where to find them” at the San Diego ComicCon! — thereby taking public outreach…

St. Matthew Island expedition: McKay’s Buntings and much more

Irby just returned from a month-long adventure on St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea. This island is the most remote location in the 50 United States as measured from its distance to the nearest permanent human settlement. The trip was a partnership between the Lab’s Conservation Media Program and…

New book chapter: Population Genomics of Birds: Evolutionary History and Conservation

Postdocs Dave Toews and Jen Walsh and Research Associate Leonardo Campagna have contributed a chapter on avian genomics to the new population genomics book series. The chapter reviews conceptual advances of avian genomics, along with key examples from the literature. The authors review the utility of genome-wide data in addressing…

Capuchino seedeaters hybridize in captivity and produce novel plumage patterns

Research Associate Leonardo Campagna published a new study in PLOS ONE analyzing capuchino seedeater data gathered by aviculturists over more than a decade. Capuchino’s are common cage birds in South America and will breed in captivity, or under the right conditions, hybridize. The study compares the viability of F1 capuchino…

Small class sizes reduce performance gaps in STEM

Grad student Stepfanie Aguillon co-authored a new paper with collaborators from multiple institutions (led by former Cornell EEB postdoc Dr. Cissy Ballen) looking at the influence of class size on performance of women and underrepresented minority (URM) students in STEM classes. They found that small class sizes reduce gaps in…

50 years of bird research at Hubbard Brook

Over the past weekend Irby joined a large group of project alumni to celebrate the bird research program that has run continuously for half a century at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This project was initiated by Professor Dick Holmes, Irby’s undergraduate mentor…