In December 2020, Katherine defended her Master’s Thesis, a project focused on identifying the genomic signatures underlying reproductive isolation in two hybridizing songbirds. Black-capped and Carolina chickadees form a well-studied hybrid zone that spans from New Jersey to Kansas. Katherine’s research, in support of previous studies, identified continued northward movement...

In lieu of the traditional end of semester Taylor Lab Bake Off, a few members of the lab participated in the first ever Bake With! Unfortunately, Scott's lemony tumeric tea cake was described by Zach as "a bit gummy". He also forgot the salt... Mia, Johanna, and Kathryn managed to...

Johanna's work on meadowlark song was recently featured in a news article on the Macaulay Library website . Their song research has focused on differentiating Lilian's, Eastern, and Western meadowlarks using community contributed song data. The article highlights research presented at the North American Ornithological Conference that used sounds from...

Angela will be starting her fellowship with the Center for the Study of Origins this spring. She will be working on a project examining immune gene variation in Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees using whole genome data for both species. Through this fellowship Angela will also be working with researchers across...

Scott is honored to have recently been elected as a Fellow by the American Ornithological Society (AOS)! From the AOS: "Fellows are chosen for eminence in ornithology and must, at the time of their election, be Elective Members of the society in good standing. Thus, AOS Fellows are recognized for...

This paper is a large international project is co-led by University of Copenhagen, China National Genebank at BGI-Shenzhen, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Rockefeller University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and includes researchers from across the globe, including the Taylor lab. In this study, researchers established a...

Fall is definitely in the air - the trees are changing color and it's feeling cooler outside. For Mia, the highlight of fall is Halloween and to keep up spirits during these challenging times, she wanted to celebrate it properly: by decorating! Mia entered her apartment complex's Halloween door decorating...

Erik, Scott, and collaborators Garth Spellman (Denver Museum of Nature and Science), Kevin Winker (University of Alaska), Jack Withrow (University of Alaska), Erika Zavaleta (University of California Santa Cruz), and Kristen Ruegg (Colorado State University), recently published some of their work on rosy-finches in Systematic Biology. This work uses whole...

Sheela was awarded the Mark E. Hauber Award for best oral presentation on avian behavior at the virtual NAOC 2020 meeting. Her talk was entitled “Assortative mating by plumage coloration genes in an incipient avian radiation” and covered exciting findings from her work on capuchino seedeaters.

Mia Larrieu, a graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will be joining the Taylor lab as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow and PhD student this fall. Prior to starting her PhD in our lab, Mia spent a few years as a field research assistant on some really interesting...