A colorful legacy of hybridization in wood-warblers includes frequent sharing of carotenoid genes among species and genera Introgression between species can shape evolutionary trajectories in important ways. This study of the entire family of the colorful wood-warblers (Parulidae) uses whole-genome sequencing to reveal fr...

New paper out. If you like colorful birds, hybridization, and phylogenetics, read on! 🧵https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003501

Fun to collaborate with @whalesmels.bsky.social on this study, where we worked with Mark Stanback to glean insights from his amazing hornbill nesting data! 🪶

Unprecedented lead tolerance in an urban lizard Lead (Pb) is an extremely toxic heavy metal pollutant pervasive in many environments with serious health consequences for humans and wildlife. We foun…

Early view: we find that brown anole lizards are one of, if not the most, lead tolerant vertebrates known to science combining measures of field exposure, responses to lab dosing, performance assays and functional genomics. Led by PhD student Annelise Blanchette
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cover of the journal "Nature" showing a long-nosed horned frog on leaf litter and the words "Heat Stress: How vulnerable are the worlds amphibians to rising temperatures?"

We made the cover

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats Nicole!!

Extreme lead tolerance in an urban lizard Lead (Pb) is an extremely toxic heavy metal pollutant pervasive in many environments with serious health consequences for humans and wildlife. Identifying organisms that can serve as biomonitors of le...

New work from the lab! Annelise Blanchette found that brown anole lizards may be the most lead (pb) tolerant vertebrate known to date by integrating physiological studies of field and lab exposed animals and transcriptomics #urbanecology #ecotox #anolis 🦎 1/n

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Awesome new manakin work by @kevinfpbennett.bsky.social et al!

BCO2 controls collar pigmentation in Manacus manakins, and the pigmented-collar allele arose in one species, introgressed into a second, and kept on introgressin’ from the second species into a third 🧬🪶

Ah, bummer!! Hope to catch you at a meeting soon!

A male white-bearded manakin (Manacus manacus) perches at a lek site in northwestern Ecuador (FCAT Reserve). Photo by Sam Case.

The quantity of fruit resources around male display courts significantly predicted male display rates, which in turn predicted rates of female visitation (a proxy for mating success).

Excited to share that my first dissertation chapter has been published in Biology Letters!

"Fruit resources shape sexual selection processes in a lek mating system"

Check it out at: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Thanks Rafael!! Yeah, I couldn’t resist slipping that nugget in there as it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Definitely partly Lewontin-inspired, and also links to your idea of lekking as an “evolutionary ratchet”! Will you be at AOS? Would love to discuss more!

Ooh, can’t wait to read it! Congrats!!

Yeah I hear you.. I suppose it’s only an issue from a modeling perspective if those life history traits (diet shift, female-only care, etc) aren’t already fixed in the pop prior to the start of runaway? (which, I have no idea if they are!)

Interesting! I’m wondering if allele(s) for increased maternal care would be necessary if changes in diet reduced the total parental care load. This is often suggested (but rarely tested) for lekking spp (switch to frugivory reduced foraging difficulty and “liberated” males from parental care)

Thanks!!

scholar.google.com/citations?us...

Juvenile white-bearded manakin (Manacus manacus) with red and green color bands on its legs

Fieldwork on Christmas Day => red and green color bands 🎄🪶

Eyelash palm-pitviper (Bothriechis schlegelii), Ecuadorian Chocó.

Sounds great, thanks!

A ~1.8m anesthetized bushmaster is laid out on a table, while a veterinarian/biologist (Dale DeNardo) makes an incision in the skin to implant a radio transmitter. Surgical tools are spread across the table and the head is being contained in a tube by a second biologist (Maria Elena Barragan).

Awesome to witness this bushmaster surgery at Reserva FCAT! Bushmasters are the longest vipers in the world, and researchers here are implanting radio transmitters to track the snakes’ movements, with goals of understanding their basic biology and reducing human-wildlife conflict in NW Ecuador.

White-bearded manakin in the hand

Finally made it over to Bsky! I suppose it’s only fitting to kick things off with a manakin pic..