News

Congratulations to Haley and Ajay who have been awarded Research, Education & Conservation grants from the Denver Field Ornithologists! Ajay will be using his award to further investigate the geographic consistency of the genetic basis of spatial cognition in mountain chickadee populations of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and the California...

Congratulations to first year PhD students Sara Padula and Nikki Addison for being awarded a $10,000 grant from Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) to conduct a passive recording field study. The project is entitled "The effect of anthropogenic noise on songbirds on OSMP land." Field work for the...

Congratulations to Mia who recently completed her Master's degree. Mia joined the lab in 2020 and was an integral member of the Boulder Chickadee Study over the last three years. During that time she banded over 250 chickadees and shared her knowledge of birds with numerous members of the public,...

The Taylor Lab welcomes Dr. Jay Falk, an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow joining the lab this month. Jay studies the evolution of sex differences and similarities, and is broadly interested in how social interaction leads to biodiversity both within and across species. With hummingbirds as a model taxa, Jay uses an...

Congrats to Angela and Colleagues for their article recently accepted to the journal Parasites and Vectors . The article titled “Survey of Haemosporidian Parasite Infections in an Endangered High Alpine Bird,” is an exploration of haemosporidian parasites that infect Brown-capped Rosy Finches. The Brown-capped Rosy Finch is a nearly endemic...

Congrats to Erik and his colleagues! The final chapter of Erik's PhD thesis was recently accepted for publication in Evolution . Erik's manuscript explores genotype-phenotype associations for plumage color and elevation in rosy finches and highlights several candiate genes for both. Given their recent diversification and the independent nature of...

Living Bird, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's publication, recently featured our collaborative work on chickadee spatial cognition in their Winter 2023 issue. This work is conducted with Dr. Valdimir Pravosudov, Dr. Carrie Branch, Ben Sonnenberg, and Dr. Georgy Semenov. Click the link to learn more: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/harsh-mountain-winters-have-made-chickadees-smarter/

Congrats to Kathryn and her co-authors Theresa Burg and Ken Otter for their recent paper in Global Change Biology . One of Kathryn's main thesis chapters, this paper describes the relationship between human landscape disturbance and hybridization between black-capped and mountain chickadees. Our local work with t he Boulder Chickadee...

The Taylor Lab welcomes Dr. Haley Kenyon, the newest Postdoctoral Associate to join us in Boulder. Haley will be expanding upon her PhD research on chickadee signaling by working within the Boulder Chickadee Study. A fellow Canadian, Taylor Lab members should expect to see butter tarts and Nanaimo bars at...

Sara Padula, first year PhD student in the lab, has published her undergraduate research in Wader Study entitled Kiawah and Seabrook islands are a critical site for the rufa Red Knot. The rufa Red Knot is a long distance migratory shorebird that has experienced a population decline of over 85%...