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Scott will be the next Director of the Mountain Research Station and will become an INSTAAR Fellow

May 4, 2021

As of June 1, 2021 Scott will be the Director of the CU Boulder Mountain Research Station (MRS) as well as a Fellow of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). Scott will be taking over from Dr. Bill Bowman who has been station Director for 31 years. Leading...

meadowlarks

Johanna's honors thesis is now published in Ornithology!

April 24, 2021

Congratulations to Johanna and Erik for the recent publication of Johanna's honors thesis in Ornithology ! Johanna and Erik worked closely together and combined acoustic and genomic analyses to clarify differetiation and species limits in the North American meadowlarks. Their results clearly show that Lilian's Meadowlark is both acoustically and...

Atwood

Scott gave the "Rising Star in Evolution" talk for the 2021 Atwood Colloquium at the University of Toronto

April 17, 2021

Every year biologists from all three University of Toronto campuses as well as the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) participate in the Atwood Colloquium. In addition to featuring talks from U of T graduate students, postdocs, and faculty, three guest speakers are invited. This year Scott was invited as the "Rising...

Sheela Turbek

Sheela defended her doctoral thesis!

April 2, 2021

Sheela successfully defended her thesis on March 31st and is officially a doctor! Her dissertation work combined field-based behavioral experiments with whole-genome sequencing to study the behavioral traits that limit interbreeding between incipient avian species. Sheela will be joining Dr. Kristen Ruegg's lab at Colorado State University as a postdoc...

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Sheela publishes on seedeater speciation in Science!

March 25, 2021

Congratulations to Sheela for publishing a large part of her PhD thesis in Science! This work, led by Sheela in close collaboration with Dr. Leo Campagna , combines whole genome sequencing with incredibly challenging field studies of mating behavior in two Sporophila seedeaters. It provides exciting evidence that the Iberá...

Chickadee nestling

Mia, Cori, Angela and Will received grants from CFO and/or DFO!

March 22, 2021

Mia has recently received funding from both the Denver Field Ornithologists and Colorado Field Ornithologists! She will use these grants to help set up her summer pilot project, as part of her PhD research, to explore how urbanization and elevation affects chickadee nestling development and behaviors exhibited within the nest...

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Cori and Erik gave talks for the Denver Field Ornithologists

March 8, 2021

Cori and Erik recently gave talks about their Denver Feild Ornithologists funded reseach to a packed virtual house with over 100 guests. Cori's first public talk, during which she detailed her findings from using DNA metabarcoding to determine what black-capped and mountain chickadees feed their young, was a smashing success...

peruvian booby nests

Scott talks guano islands with the Broomfield Birding Club

Feb. 27, 2021

Scott recently gave a talk titled "Guarding the world's finest guano: a story of ecology and economy" to the Broomfield Birding Club. The talk was focussed on the islands that Scott visited during his PhD fieldwork in Peru and Chile. These islands, the famous guano islands, have an amazing history...

Motacilla alba courtship

New paper in Nature Communications led by Georgy

Feb. 15, 2021

In a new paper just published in Nature Communications, we uncover a long-standing mystery of genetic architecture of the head plumage differences between alba and personata subspecies of the white wagtail. Read about our findings here and also check out "Behing the paper" blog post and a press release in...

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Scott gave a talk at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology

Feb. 5, 2021

Scott recently visited (virtually) the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, to give a talk about some of the lab's recent projects. Scotts talked focused on Erik's new work on redpoll supergenes (in collaboration with Dr. Nick Mason at LSU) and the work that Scott, Georgy, and Dom...

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