A diagram showing the evolutionary relationships among modern birds. The branches are color coded by the estimated likelihood of retaining ancestral character variability, with higher likelihoods in red.

A new paper I'm on is out today! Led by Stanley Somogyi, we suggest that ancestrally variable characters stabilized independently in different bird lineages, causing distantly related groups to retain similar traits and creating headaches for bird systematists. www.cell.com/current-biol... 🪶🧪

Sagan would be proud!

Dunno if there are good data. Briskie and Montgomerie looked at the correlation of length of copulation with presence of intromittent organs to test the efficiency hypothesis for the origin of the cloacal kiss but didn’t see an effect.

First read everything by Patricia Brennan. Then realize that most birds aren’t nearly so interesting. Balance, female tail to the side, male tail down, reaching, reaching, touching, ejaculating, falling, done. Hopefully got some sperm transfer.

Some excellent zingers in there. My favorite: “Emotion, after all, is an evolutionary adaptation that feeds into pro-social behavior, not a just silly dispensable quality women have.”

I’ve been using them since falling for Dickinson’s poetry in high school, and refuse to change. I loved 99% Invisible’s em dash episode, especially learning how editors removed most of her dashes prior to publishing her work.

Sir, can you be suggesting I’m expected to carefully read all emails?

Birdo nerd peeps, it’s happening!!!! #IOC2026 in Merida Yucatán, Nov 30 - Dec 5. Early Bird (doiiii) just opened! iocongress2026.com #orno #ornithology

UMN: Don't Close Boynton Dental Clinic! On March 5th, the University of Minnesota announced plans to permanently close the Boynton Health Dental Clinic, which has served the university community for nearly 106 years. This closure will hav...

#UMN has closed their dental clinic with no warning or explanation, and in flagrant violation of their contract with UMN grad workers - this is the only dental care covered by our health plan!
If associated w/ UMN, please sign/share the petition to stop this: actionnetwork.org/petitions/um...

First-generation hybrids between two highly divergent Wren species Despite four million years of divergence, Winter Wren and Pacific Wren can still interbreed.

Your daily Avian Hybrids story!

First-generation hybrids between two highly divergent Wren species
avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2022/04/09/f...

#ornithology

And no one—certainly not me—has ever judged a game by its choice of bird vocalizations. Mumble BOTW mumble.

Mostly consensus, but:
Star Trek 2: TWOK
Star Trek: TNG
Rogue One
Aliens

Go see one, it’s worth it.

On sabotage of our young scientists, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dietary specialization drives adaptation, convergence, and integration across the cranial and appendicular skeleton in Waterfowl (Anseriformes) Abstract. Convergence provides strong evidence for adaptation, reflecting similar responses to recurring selection pressures. Waterfowl (order Anseriformes

I can finally share my main postdoc project! It took a while but we finally got it out

So if you want to read about an updated phylogeny for waterfowl and all the convergent evolution they get up to boy do I have a paper/thread for you

academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan... 🪶🧪

We also have a job search open for a researcher/prof in systematcs & malacology 🐌 🦪 🐙 🦑 @ib_unam! Here’s the info www.ib.unam.mx/ibunam/Convo... Malacólogues del mundo, venid a la @UNAM!

Come join me and other great colleagues at @ib_unam !! We’re searching for a new orno 🦅 🦢 🦉 systematics researcher/prof. for the largest bird collection in Mexico. See details herein www.ib.unam.mx/ibunam/Convo... Amigxs ornitólogxs! Habemus búsqueda de nuevx investigadorx! Apliquen!

My department at CSU Northridge is hiring a vertebrate functional morphologist! We've got a great EEB group, and we're looking for someone to carry forward a tradition of enriching organismal courses and community-engaged research. App review starts March 15

csucareers.calstate.edu/mob/cw/en-us...

TPM is my pick. I stayed up for a midnight showing on opening day and was livid leaving the theater. I waited all those years for THAT!!??!! Ewan and Liam did their best though.

No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality | PNAS The potential role of haplodiploid sex determination in promoting the evolution of altruism and eusociality has been the subject of intense debate ...

📄 No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality 🐝🐜

⬇️
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Diagram showing the evolutionary relationships among several groups of songbirds, including the recently extinct, nectar-feeding ʻōʻō.

Phylogenetic position of ʻōʻō (Hawaiian "honeyeaters"): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🪶🧪 (📷Zhao et al.)

If you are a student whose NSF GRFP application was returned without review for vague 'eligibility' reasons:
1) Let your department chair & Graduate School know. Encourage them to contact NSF & congress
2) Write to your congressional reps.
3) Write to grfp@nsf.gov to request re-consideration;

Cultural Lutheranism FTW

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is amazing, but y'all should know that it employs about 200 people to make those resources happen. Serving detailed biodiversity information takes significant resources, on the order of tens of millions of dollars per year.

Mandibular morphology clarifies phylogenetic relationships near the origin of crown birds - BMC Ecology and Evolution Background The phylogenetic relationships of fossil birds near the origin of the avian crown group remain debated, in part due to a limited amount of character evidence from incomplete fossils. The av...

🚨NEW PAPER OUT🚨
The anatomy of bird lower jaw bones has been understudied...until now! Here, we examine avian mandibular anatomy, answering some and raising more questions about the phylogenetic affinities of key early crown-group birds. Read on!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Solidarity hot dish.

Um 3M makes that shit.

Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump.

Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.