20 September 2009

Laura Kennedy joins the Lab

as Research Specialist Extraordinaire in charge of molecular and biochemical labs and fieldwork. In her Master's thesis research, Laura studied coexistence and susceptibility to predation in relation to life history stage of common mergansers (Mergus merganser) and harlequin ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus) in Prince William Sound in Alaska.

27 August 2009

Royal Society runs an advertising compaign with our photos, Alex Badyaev is elected a Fellow of the AOU

The Royal Society runs an advertising campaing for its biomedical journals with our photos of finch embryos sucking their thumbs.The photo series, taked by Rebecca Young and Alex Badyaev, had debuted in the 2007 article in Science News and since then appeared on two covers. In other news, in a vote in Philadelphia, Alex Badyaev was elected a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union.

18 August 2009

Figures from our four-months-old paper are already in two books

The ink has not dried yet on our May's paper —“Evolutionary significance of phenotypic accommodation in novel environments: An empirical test of the Baldwin effect” — but two of its figures, No 1 and 2, are already republished in two books — “Avian Invasions:The Ecology and Evolution of Exotic Birds” (Oxford Univ. Press) by Tim Blackburn, Julie Lockwood and Phillip Cassey and “Childhood Evolving: Emotion, Relationships, and Mind” by Melvin Konner (Harvard Univ. Press).

1 August 2009

The Vigilante MiniStorage's "Sweet 15" reunion

took place in Missoula, to celebrate the end of the 15th season in the world's most infamous house finch study site. Since 1994, 42 field techs, 48 undergraduates, 17 grads, 4 postdocs, and 11 professors worked there. More than 10K Vigilante's finches have had their lives told in nearly a hundred scientific papers, book chapters, theses and dissertations. Over the years, the site had generated $2.3mil in research funding (enough to buy it and a nearby railroad) and established collaborations with 7 universities. BBC and Green Umbrella Ltd. filmed episodes of their “Life of Birds” (1999) and “Triumph of Life” (2000) there and the Society for Conservation Biology ran bus tours of it from nearby conferences. The home of the original online CCTV hatching monitoring, mechanical flying hawks used for weekly herding of all resident finches into mistnet corridors, wireless reading of incubation probes, molecular genetic lab in a storage shed (still regularly mistaked for rural meth lab by local police), and of many other inventions and discoveries still remains “Safe, Dry, and Convenient” place to study evolution in the wild.

12 July 2009

Kevin Oh to start at Cornell University

as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr Kerry Shaw's lab after considering several other offers from around the world. In his postdoctoral research, Kevin will investigate the evolution and genetics of traits involved in reproductive incompatibility and speciation.

7:43AM, 10 July 2009

A new Montana kid

A future defender of western Montana grizzly bears and trumpeter swans is born, appropriately in a cabin in Blackfoot Valley, and pretty much joined the fieldcrews right away, following the example of his insane mother. So, in addition to the 2009 finch databook and the 2009 bluebird databook, there is now the 2009 Victor databook to carry around in the field. 3.3 kg, 51cm, 2hr labor. Generally approves the new world around him, but hates mosquitoes.

| upd1 | upd2 |

25 June 2009

Covering sciences

Displaying Tasmania's silver gulls (a homage to Niko Tinbergen) is our cover of a new Cambridge University Press “Social Behavior: Genes, Ecology and Evolution” book, a black morph Blackfoot wolf is the face of an upcoming non-majors textbook from Pearson, the “Finches on the Moon” photo — a former cover and highlight of JEB, Nature, and NSF Report — continues its life as a new membership postcard from ESEB, while the finch trio on saguaro is the new advertisement poster for Wiley-Blackwell's Molecular Ecology/Molecular Ecology Resources journals.

15 May 2009

Laura Stein is 1) The College of Science Outstanding Senior;
2) The 2009 COS's Commencement Speaker!

Laura is the first EEB major, in almost a decade, to receive the highest distinction to a graduating student by the University of Arizona's College of Science. And probably one of the few people ever to give the Commencement Address (in Centennial Hall, no less) before actually graduating herself.

Commencement address: | video |

10 May 2009

Tina Esposito accepts graduate program offer from the Midwestern University, Laura Stein is to start doctoral program in the University of Illinois

After two years in the lab, Tina moves on to graduate studies in Midwestern University's College of Optometry in Glendale, AZ. The proximity of the College will enable her to maintain her large ongoing project in the lab — a study of the relationship between extreme inbreeding depression and development of complex skeletal structures.

After considering exceptional offers from seven doctoral programs throughout the country, Laura will join the laboratory of Dr Alison Bell in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as the 2009 Illinois Distinguished Fellow.

1 May 2009

"Living with snakes, part 1"added

A gallery showing the ontogeny of snake-mobbing behavior in Sonoran desert's rock squirrels is added to the Feature category of TenBestPhotos.com. Also added are "Tequila bats" — a portfolio of agave-pollinating bats, "Vogue|winter" style of photographing birds, and "New Year Day's finches" from the first day of the year in the north. Tenbestphotos.com is now among the 20 most accessed animal photography websites, according to a report by CNN.com/web.

8 April 2009

Dr. Kevin P. Oh, Ph.D.

Following successful defense of his comprehensive dissertation "Evolutionary dynamics of sexual traits: Demographic, genetic, and behavioral contingencies" and an outstanding research seminar, Kevin is awarded a Ph.D. from University of Arizona. Among those eagerly awaiting the outcome of his defense were thousands of genotyped house finches from the Arizona study populations. With time, they will learn to miss him.

Kevin's dissertation work has resulted in eleven publications on evolutionary ecology of this species' native populations.

5 April 2009

ECOL 330 sets a new record for enrollment speed

ECOL 330: "Evolution of Animal Form & Function" for Fall 2009 semester fills up to full capacity in 20 minutes after fall enrollment opens at 12AM on April 3rd. Those with slower internet connections or normal sleep habits now form a lengthy waiting list. This beats the previous record of 3 hours 50 minutes set in 2007.

In the coming fall, the course will be significantly restructured.

23 March 2009

Laura Stein receives the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department's Outstanding Senior Award!

In their recommendation, the committee particularly highlighted a unique combination of Laura's outstanding scholarship and exceptional independent research and Honors thesis projects.

Laura is the third graduate of the Lab to receive the EEB's most prestigious graduating senior award. Got to be the record...

Previous recipients were Dr. Rosetta Mui (2003) — now a postdoc in University of Hong Kong, and Jerod Merkle (2006) — now a grad student at the University of Montana.

26 February 2009

Rachael Delaney presents her work at the Honors College Research Forum

Rachael presented her research on the evolution of niche breadth in populations of specialist and generalist species of soricid shrews, focusing on the mechanisms that link the diversity of ecological factors to evolutionary diversifications in foraging mophology. Her poster — "What are generalists: An empirical test with morphological, functional, and ecological varaition in generalist and specialist populations of soricid shrews"— was presented at the Undergraduate Honors College Research Forum.

7 February 2009

Kevin Oh receives The 2009 Outstanding TA Award

The award highlights Kevin's exceptional teaching record and accomplishments at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The award was presented at a College of Science ceremony.

20 January 2009

Four papers, four covers

The cover photo of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society highlights a paper presenting a novel perspective on the evolution of parental effects and an empirical paper on the origin of novel adaptations through phenotypic accomodation (the Baldwin Effect). The cover of Evolution highlights a paper by Dr. Renee Duckworth — Simpson Fellow at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology - on the evolution of genetic integration in dispersal strategies during range expansions. The cover of Molecular Ecology Resources features Lab's paper on development of DNA microsatellites for the house finch. And the cover of Journal of Zoology highlights a comprehensive study of ectoparasite community of the house finch, including the first description of two new ectoparasite genera for this species.

|Original photo for Evolution | Original photo for Phil. Trans.R. | Original photo for J. Zoology |

4 January 2009

Tobias Uller receives ASAB Outstanding Young Investigator Award; Alex Badyaev is elected to the council of the Society for the Study of Evolution

Adding to a long list of prestigious international recognitions, Tobias Uller receives The 2009 Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) Outstanding Young Investigator Award. In addition to receiving a research grant, Tobias will deliver a keynote talk at the 2009 ASAB Meeting in Cardiff, UK.
   "When the Society for the Study of Evolution is viewed by its members as a rare forum to exchange their best ideas, and when the science that we do and fundamental problems that we address are perceived by the public as needed and important, we will have not only fewer battles to fight, but can also recapture the original excitement about a unified evolutionary view of biological disciplines that accompanied the society’s creation. These are ambitious, but important goals for the Council." And with this Alex Badyaev will serve until 2011. No good deed goes unpunished.

31 December 2008

Happy New Year!
(word cloud from the text of LabNews'08)