Really remarkable plant sex allocation study here: hermaphroditic avocado plants alternate sex roles twice daily and hence generate balanced sex allocation- controlled by ancient trans-species polymorphism. Heard a bit about this jaw-dropping work at UC Davis last year - great to see it out!

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1

Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space

Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...

rdcu.be

🚨Out today in @society4conbio.bsky.social, in my new paper with @birdmapper.bsky.social, we show a positive relationship between exinction risk and colourfulness across the world's passerine birds! conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The link between colorfulness and extinction risk across the world's passerine birds

Many of the functional traits that mediate extinction risk across the range of biodiversity relate indirectly to a species’ ability to persist in a changing world, yet certain traits such as colorati...

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Hey friends! My latest feature for the @cornellbirds.bsky.social magazine dropped yesterday, about some really cool research into how a long history of cross-genus hybridization may have influenced the cheerful yellow colors of today's warblers. www.allaboutbirds.org/news/when-ev...

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

Just out--excited to share: The land surrounding remaining habitats has outsized effects for species--as large or larger than habitat loss & fragmentation. It was a huge experimental effort to isolate attribution for landscape ecology & conservation. @camzoology.bsky.social @brunalab.bsky.social

Landscape quality drives ecological responses to habitat loss and fragmentation - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Habitat loss and fragmentation are among the greatest threats to biodiversity. Here the authors show that habitat quality of the surrounding landscape can also affect demographic rates and population ...

nature.com

🔊 We're getting ready to update the @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social #phylogeny & #taxonomy! Please please please! If you have a phylogeny published in the last year, or you've noticed one we're missing, let us know via the feedback form at the top of the page. birdsoftheworld.org/bow/phylogen... @world

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 · 2mo 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

I am recruiting a #postdoc to work on assembling and analyzing #genomes of the amazing Furnariidae. Let’s unlock the secret behind their #evolution. The official application portal will be available soon at www.uno.edu/careers. Feel free to contact me for details at sclaramu@uno.edu

Odd that the resprout American chestnuts, functionally extinct at this point from disease, currently stand out in forests here in NY because the similar looking American beech are doing so poorly these days

What makes a coffee landscape full of birds? Is it how farms are managed, or how much forest is left around them? Read our latest paper in @jappliedecology.bsky.social and find out! And stay tuned for more news. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @selvaorgco.bsky.social

📢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

We’ve been pretty busy since 2014 or so…just getting around to unpacking some boxes from then. 😬 Found some gems. Some destined for the recycling at this point, but might have to save that cover! @esajournals.bsky.social

Just watched a phoebe, robin, and junco simultaneously dive bomb a Blue Jay creeping around near their nests. It was actually gathering its own nest material, but not sure they gave a…

Eliot Miller@eliotmiller.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Different bird species nest near each other more often than expected by chance. I've seen it frequently in Australia, but I think it's widespread. I know there are occasional documented cases (e.g. www.audubon.org/magazine/why...), but is there anything published on the phenomenon more generally?

Different bird species nest near each other more often than expected by chance. I've seen it frequently in Australia, but I think it's widespread. I know there are occasional documented cases (e.g. www.audubon.org/magazine/why...), but is there anything published on the phenomenon more generally?

Why a Hawk Is a Hummingbird’s Best Friend

The raptors help keep predators away from the tiny birds, new research shows.

audubon.org

Research from the lab on the evolution of size and plumage dimorphism in birds! Grad student Catherine Alverson examined how species move between size and plumage dimorphism categories. While those results largely recapitulated previous work, there was an intriguing new finding [1/3]

Finally posted a preprint describing the method behind the madness 💥 "clootl: an R package for accessing and manipulating a complete, versioned avian phylogeny" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @snacktavish.bsky.social @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social

Suppose you wanted to create a reproducible method for plotting phylogenies in the most tree-like (as in a plant) fashion while maintaining scientific accuracy. How would you do this? I had need to consider this question recently, and went on a brief but deep coding/algorithmic dive to explore.

NSF LTER program “archived”. LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”. This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings. My heart is breaking.

🚨 Hiring a postdoc (2 years)! We’re looking for someone with skills in data science, remote sensing, or computer science: 🛰️ Build next-gen nighttime light products 🦅 Link light spectra to migration & collision risk Apply or reach out! aeroecolab.com/opportunities

Purdue AeroEco Lab Opportunities

aeroecolab.com

Frosty Tip Grackle: macaulaylibrary.org/asset/652399...

ML652399570 - Common Grackle - Macaulay Library

Macaulay Library ML652399570; © Joseph Bratta; Cook, Illinois, United States

macaulaylibrary.org

What do you all think: are the two Urocolius spp, Red-faced and Blue-naped Mousebirds, actually sister species? All molecular phylogenetic results to date seem to suggest otherwise. Help make Urocolius whole again, tell me if we're missing phylogenetic information birdsoftheworld.org/bow/phylogen...

Phylogeny Explorer - Birds of the World

The Phylogeny Explorer offers a captivating experience for exploring avian evolution, discovering closely related species, and grasping the timescales at which they evolved.

birdsoftheworld.org

The need to preserve animal culture in conservation efforts. 🪶 Gift link.

How to Bring a Bird’s Song Back From the Edge of Extinction

nytimes.com

Heading into conference abstract / presentation season, I 100% recommend Kathryn Langin's (@kangin.bsky.social) "Tell me a story! A plea for more compelling conference presentations". It's short, sweet, and not just for ornithologists. I can get behind every word! 🔒 academic.oup.com/condor/artic...

A 50-year sequence of Peru’s Ucayali River shows how a river constantly shifts its bed, reshapes landscapes and redraws maps. Rivers move, ecosystems respond and planning must learn to work with that movement rather than pretend landscapes stay fixed. Source: buff.ly/jNmzCQG

"Tiny recording backpacks reveal bats’ surprising hunting strategy" - nice description and videos by Leonie Baier https://theconversation.com/tiny-recording-backpacks-reveal-bats-surprising-hunting-strategy-271996 #bioacoustics

Tiny recording backpacks reveal bats’ surprising hunting strategy

By listening in on their nightly hunts, scientists discovered that small, fringe-lipped bats are unexpectedly able to efficiently take down prey nearly their own size.

theconversation.com

So. I was staring at Google Maps when I noticed something weird. Extensive, very structured agriculture in the northern Peruvian desert. So I zoomed in.

🦜🏔️ How did vibrant Amazonian parrot feathers end up in a desert tomb on the Pacific coast of Peru 1,000 years ago? Our new paper on @natcomms.nature.com reveals they didn't just trade feathers, pre-Inca societies transported live macaws and parrots across the Andes!👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient DNA and spatial modeling reveal a pre-Inca trans-Andean parrot trade - Nature Communications

Here, the authors combine ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and computational modeling to study colorful feathers from a pre-Incan tomb in Peru. They identify four species of parrots, which were likely ca...

nature.com

Good news! We've added enough Pacific Hornero recordings that it should be in Merlin sound ID soonish. Keep recording though! Saw two hornero statues, and it's on murals all around Loja (next to HOSP no less!). The disconnect b/w its ubiquity and notable absence in the model was driving me crazy.

Eliot Miller@eliotmiller.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Ok. We the world are up to 125. Tomorrow I start activating collaborators here in Ecuador.

Are you interested in complex social-ecological systems, pedagogy, sustainability education, and working with bright students and engaged faculty? I'm hiring a postdoc for a cool new initiative! More Info & Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31747

Ok. We the world are up to 125. Tomorrow I start activating collaborators here in Ecuador.

Eliot Miller@eliotmiller.bsky.social · 5mo ago

On a mini-mission to get enough recordings of Pacific Hornero into the @cornellbirds.bsky.social's Macaulay Library that we can add it to the Merlin sound ID model. Getting after it with phones, a parabola and, most importantly, encouraging others to do the same! macaulaylibrary.org/asset/651775...