Kevin Bennett
@kevinfpbennett.bsky.social
Postdoc, Penn State University. Previously U of Maryland. Evolution. Hybridization. Sexual selection. Birds. https://www.kevinfpbennett.com/
Very exciting. I first got interested in these efforts fifteen years ago. It's great to see them coming to fruition.
Rebekah Rogers@evolscientist.bsky.social · 4w agoUSDA approves blight resistant chestnut trees. www.newyorkupstate.com/outdoors/202...
Guest Column: Over the past year, I attached a multi-sensor geolocator backpack to a warbler, which he carried throughout his migratory journey, recording the long trek from his breeding grounds in Anchorage to a yet-unknown winter refuge and back again.
Guest Column | I put a tiny backpack on a warbler. It revealed an epic migration.
Cutting-edge tracking is illuminating the migratory journeys of warblers and dozens of other species at a scale not previously possible for small birds.
washingtonpost.com
Now with issue number etc. And we got the cover!
Kevin Bennett@kevinfpbennett.bsky.social · 5mo ago📢New warbler research!📢 A phylogeny of Myioborus (the youngest genus of warblers) plus a hypothesis for how they diversified in South America and a gene causing a color difference between hybridizing species. It was great co-leading this with Laura Céspedes Arias. doi.org/10.1093/evol...
BLink-seq is out! Linked-read sequencing that brings phased whole-genome data to non-model species at population scale. We show it phases haplotypes and detects SVs, revealing previously undocumented structural complexity in an adaptive Atlantic silverside inversion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
BLink-seq delivers population-scale haplotypes without long reads: a scalable framework for non-model genomics
Information about segregating haplotypes and structural variation (SV) can be extremely rich for a variety of applications in population genomics but remains largely inaccessible for many non-model sp...
biorxiv.org
Came across this awesome paper today - pretty excited to try it out. Bravo to the authors on a really clever approach 👏 academic.oup.com/genetics/art...
Chimeric reference panels for genomic imputation
Abstract. Despite transformative advances in genomic technologies, missing data remain a fundamental constraint that limits the full potential of genomic r
academic.oup.com
We are excited to officially share the first fully phased telomere-to-telomere (T2T) reference genome for a songbird! 🐦 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Just appreciating natural science illustrators, like Jillian Ditner, who turned this "sketch" (a dog's breakfast would be generous) into a clear, beautiful illustration of gene introgression among warblers... www.allaboutbirds.org/news/when-ev...
Excited to share a preprint of my 3rd dissertation chapter! We evaluated how a potential genomic measure of sexual selection strength, the ratio of genetic diversity on the Z chromosome vs the autosomes, varies across selective and biogeographic contexts in #manakins. Check it out! bit.ly/4fY43de
Can the Z:A ratio serve as a genomic index of sexual selection? An assessment across space and time in a genus of lekking birds
Understanding the role of sexual selection in shaping evolutionary trajectories is a key goal of biology, and thus developing a genomic measure of sexual selection strength is desirable. In systems wi...
biorxiv.org
What makes this parrot look green? It's more than just a pigment! We found that the color comes from the interaction of pigments, nano- and even microstructures of the feather itself. @jessica-dobson.bsky.social @michaelnicolai.bsky.social @wybouw.bsky.social @lilianadalba.bsky.social.
Adventures in Science! Beautiful birds and stunning Southwestern landscapes. Looking forward to more installments!
Kevin Bennett@kevinfpbennett.bsky.social · 3mo agoWe caught a redstart during our lunch break. Next we headed to West Turkey Creek, also in the Chiricahuas.
Fascinating research AND paint-by-numbers warbler sheets?! What a great idea!
Kevin Bennett@kevinfpbennett.bsky.social · 4mo agoMy paper with @davetoews.bsky.social was featured in the cover story for the latest issue of Living Bird magazine @cornellbirds.bsky.social. Check out the lovely accompanying artwork, too. Well-told by @rheisman.bsky.social.
Follow along or live vicariously through me over the next few days as I recount some fun fieldwork catching warblers in Arizona and New Mexico last month.
Kevin Bennett@kevinfpbennett.bsky.social · 3mo agoThis is me (right) and my buddy Leilton (left). @leiltonluna.bsky.social This summer we headed into the mountains of the American Southwest to find some cool birds and hopefully learn something interesting about them.
This is me (right) and my buddy Leilton (left). @leiltonluna.bsky.social This summer we headed into the mountains of the American Southwest to find some cool birds and hopefully learn something interesting about them.
How good is MiniBWA, the successor to BWA? To test it, I ran MiniBWA on sequencing from 76 different species, comparing mapping speed, rate and accuracy with BWA MEM. In short, it's really good. If you map short reads, it's well worth your time. andrewcarroll.github.io/2026/06/30/t...
The Best of Both Worlds - Assessing MiniBWA
Recently, Heng Li released MiniBWA (GitHub) alongside a paper by Heng Li and Nils Homer describing the method (paper). MiniBWA builds on the approaches in Minimap2 (also by Heng Li), but falls back on...
andrewcarroll.github.io
My paper with @davetoews.bsky.social was featured in the cover story for the latest issue of Living Bird magazine @cornellbirds.bsky.social. Check out the lovely accompanying artwork, too. Well-told by @rheisman.bsky.social.
When Evolution Painted Warblers Yellow
Millions of years ago, rare hybridization events ignited the genetic sparks that contributed to the bright yellow colors of some birds in the modern wood-warbler family.
allaboutbirds.org
Huge deal for bioinformatics.
Minibwa is a hybrid of bwa-mem and minimap2 and the successor of bwa-mem for short-read mapping. ~4X/2.5X as fast as bwa-mem/bwa-mem2 for WGS reads at comparable accuracy. Native support of directional bisulfite-seq. Applicable to long reads. Preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2606.15357
Wherein we developed a new phylogenetic method to demonstrate well-supported linkages between diet, plumage, and breeding system, and further linked all of this to a bevy of research on taste receptors, fruit toxins, digestion, and genetics in manakins. Press release: www.mpg.de/26796412/evo...
Alice Boyle@birdfiddler.bsky.social · 4mo ago#NewPaperAlert! This one has a massive author list and has been a LONG time in coming, but is SO COOL! First, check out the first figure to get you interested! Manakins! Fruit! Sexual-selection in action (displays and Z:A chromosomal diversity)! Read on for the back story & link 1/n
The flagship paper from the amazing Manakin Research Coordination Network is finally published! The time I spent with these people was the most rewarding part of my PhD.
Alice Boyle@birdfiddler.bsky.social · 4mo ago#NewPaperAlert! This one has a massive author list and has been a LONG time in coming, but is SO COOL! First, check out the first figure to get you interested! Manakins! Fruit! Sexual-selection in action (displays and Z:A chromosomal diversity)! Read on for the back story & link 1/n
📢New warbler research!📢 A phylogeny of Myioborus (the youngest genus of warblers) plus a hypothesis for how they diversified in South America and a gene causing a color difference between hybridizing species. It was great co-leading this with Laura Céspedes Arias. doi.org/10.1093/evol...
Diversification and divergence in Myioborus warblers: insights into evolutionary relationships and plumage genetics
Abstract. Genomic data can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary history of rapidly diversifying groups and the genetic basis of phenotypic trait
doi.org
Now with page numbers. Hybrid warblers! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Genetic confirmation of an “uncommon mourningthroat” (Geothlypis philadelphia × G. trichas): A rare but persistent hybrid warbler
Hybrid birds discovered outside of known hybrid zones have often presented an identification challenge but also a source of insight into evolutionary processes. With the advance of modern genetics,...
tandfonline.com
Kevin Bennett@kevinfpbennett.bsky.social · 11mo agoCheck out our short warbler hybrid paper out today, including a new unofficial common name. Carotenoid people will find some little tidbits of discussion about how these hybrids can help us understand regulation of yellow feathers.
📖 Published📖 charisma: An R package to perform reproducible colour characterization of digital images for biological studies🖥️ 🌍 🧪 👇️ buff.ly/bIUBOck
They did it!
Princeton University Press@princetonupress.bsky.social · 6mo agoAnnouncing The Bird Guide: North America! This landmark field guide, published in association with @cornellbirds.bsky.social, will set a new standard for North American bird identification. Publishing in early 2027, the guide is now available for pre-order from booksellers everywhere. 🐦⬛ 📙
Ver excited to share my just-published Darwin Review with @lh3lh3.bsky.social on population-scale long-read sequencing! royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Population-scale long-read DNA sequencing: peering under the hood of the new evolutionary genomics
Abstract. Population-scale long-read DNA sequencing (PLRS) is rapidly reshaping our understanding of genomic variation in humans and non-model species. In
royalsocietypublishing.org
I made a little android app to better explore what species are around! It's called Manakin (play on the Merlin app) and it lets you download and explore iNat data. It can also help you plan out trips and remind you when your target species is active.
Our paper is on the cover of @currentbiology.bsky.social : a strawberry poison frog with the most common color morph, living up to its common name 🍓. In this issue, we uncover the genetic basis of color variation in frogs from Bocas del Toro, where blue, green, yellow, orange, and red morphs occur
Diana Aguilar-Gómez@dianaguilr.bsky.social · 8mo agoThe last chapter of my PhD is finally out !!!! In the same species, on neighboring islands, we see radically different warning colors emerge. Evolution in action: Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...
I wrote a blog post for the Wilson Society about my recent paper with @davetoews.bsky.social where we confirmed the identity of the most common *non-hybrid zone* hybrid warbler, which we named the uncommon mourningthroat.
Wilson Ornithological Society@wilsonornithsoc.bsky.social · 7mo agoThere's a new guest post on the WOS blog! WJO author Kevin Bennett describes the work that went into definitively identifying an "Uncommon Mourningthroat," a Mourning Warbler x Common Yellowthroat hybrid. #ornithology
