🚨Out today in @society4conbio.bsky.social, in my new paper with @birdmapper.bsky.social, we show a positive relationship between exinction risk and colourfulness across the world's passerine birds! conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Hey friends! My latest feature for the @cornellbirds.bsky.social magazine dropped yesterday, about some really cool research into how a long history of cross-genus hybridization may have influenced the cheerful yellow colors of today's warblers. www.allaboutbirds.org/news/when-ev...

Just out--excited to share: The land surrounding remaining habitats has outsized effects for species--as large or larger than habitat loss & fragmentation. It was a huge experimental effort to isolate attribution for landscape ecology & conservation. @camzoology.bsky.social @brunalab.bsky.social

🔊 We're getting ready to update the @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social #phylogeny & #taxonomy! Please please please! If you have a phylogeny published in the last year, or you've noticed one we're missing, let us know via the feedback form at the top of the page. birdsoftheworld.org/bow/phylogen... @world

Wherein we developed a new phylogenetic method to demonstrate well-supported linkages between diet, plumage, and breeding system, and further linked all of this to a bevy of research on taste receptors, fruit toxins, digestion, and genetics in manakins. Press release: www.mpg.de/26796412/evo...

I am recruiting a #postdoc to work on assembling and analyzing #genomes of the amazing Furnariidae. Let’s unlock the secret behind their #evolution. The official application portal will be available soon at www.uno.edu/careers. Feel free to contact me for details at [email protected]

Odd that the resprout American chestnuts, functionally extinct at this point from disease, currently stand out in forests here in NY because the similar looking American beech are doing so poorly these days

What makes a coffee landscape full of birds? Is it how farms are managed, or how much forest is left around them? Read our latest paper in @jappliedecology.bsky.social and find out! And stay tuned for more news. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @selvaorgco.bsky.social

📢New warbler research!📢 A phylogeny of Myioborus (the youngest genus of warblers) plus a hypothesis for how they diversified in South America and a gene causing a color difference between hybridizing species. It was great co-leading this with Laura Céspedes Arias. doi.org/10.1093/evol...

We’ve been pretty busy since 2014 or so…just getting around to unpacking some boxes from then. 😬 Found some gems. Some destined for the recycling at this point, but might have to save that cover! @esajournals.bsky.social

Just watched a phoebe, robin, and junco simultaneously dive bomb a Blue Jay creeping around near their nests. It was actually gathering its own nest material, but not sure they gave a…

Different bird species nest near each other more often than expected by chance. I've seen it frequently in Australia, but I think it's widespread. I know there are occasional documented cases (e.g. www.audubon.org/magazine/why...), but is there anything published on the phenomenon more generally?

Research from the lab on the evolution of size and plumage dimorphism in birds! Grad student Catherine Alverson examined how species move between size and plumage dimorphism categories. While those results largely recapitulated previous work, there was an intriguing new finding [1/3]

Finally posted a preprint describing the method behind the madness 💥 "clootl: an R package for accessing and manipulating a complete, versioned avian phylogeny" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @snacktavish.bsky.social @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social

Suppose you wanted to create a reproducible method for plotting phylogenies in the most tree-like (as in a plant) fashion while maintaining scientific accuracy. How would you do this? I had need to consider this question recently, and went on a brief but deep coding/algorithmic dive to explore.

NSF LTER program “archived”. LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”. This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings. My heart is breaking.

🚨 Hiring a postdoc (2 years)! We’re looking for someone with skills in data science, remote sensing, or computer science: 🛰️ Build next-gen nighttime light products 🦅 Link light spectra to migration & collision risk Apply or reach out! aeroecolab.com/opportunities

Frosty Tip Grackle: macaulaylibrary.org/asset/652399...

What do you all think: are the two Urocolius spp, Red-faced and Blue-naped Mousebirds, actually sister species? All molecular phylogenetic results to date seem to suggest otherwise. Help make Urocolius whole again, tell me if we're missing phylogenetic information birdsoftheworld.org/bow/phylogen...

The need to preserve animal culture in conservation efforts. 🪶 Gift link.

Heading into conference abstract / presentation season, I 100% recommend Kathryn Langin's (@kangin.bsky.social) "Tell me a story! A plea for more compelling conference presentations". It's short, sweet, and not just for ornithologists. I can get behind every word! 🔒 academic.oup.com/condor/artic...

A 50-year sequence of Peru’s Ucayali River shows how a river constantly shifts its bed, reshapes landscapes and redraws maps. Rivers move, ecosystems respond and planning must learn to work with that movement rather than pretend landscapes stay fixed. Source: buff.ly/jNmzCQG

"Tiny recording backpacks reveal bats’ surprising hunting strategy" - nice description and videos by Leonie Baier https://theconversation.com/tiny-recording-backpacks-reveal-bats-surprising-hunting-strategy-271996 #bioacoustics

So. I was staring at Google Maps when I noticed something weird. Extensive, very structured agriculture in the northern Peruvian desert. So I zoomed in.

🦜🏔️ How did vibrant Amazonian parrot feathers end up in a desert tomb on the Pacific coast of Peru 1,000 years ago? Our new paper on @natcomms.nature.com reveals they didn't just trade feathers, pre-Inca societies transported live macaws and parrots across the Andes!👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Good news! We've added enough Pacific Hornero recordings that it should be in Merlin sound ID soonish. Keep recording though! Saw two hornero statues, and it's on murals all around Loja (next to HOSP no less!). The disconnect b/w its ubiquity and notable absence in the model was driving me crazy.

Are you interested in complex social-ecological systems, pedagogy, sustainability education, and working with bright students and engaged faculty? I'm hiring a postdoc for a cool new initiative! More Info & Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31747

Ok. We the world are up to 125. Tomorrow I start activating collaborators here in Ecuador.

The first version of FigTree was released nearly 20 years ago and it is still widely used (including by me). But there are currently 85 issues on the GitHub repo (github.com/rambaut/figt...) and some of them I don’t really like the look of.

In 2006 I spent a week w Harold Greeney trying to find the first nest of the Jocotoco Antpitta. We spent 12 hrs a day swimming through soaking wet bamboo. After all that, I managed to see one's shadow for about 1/16 of a second. Flash forward to today...

And here is some of the amazing news coverage of our paper. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/c... by @catrineinhorn.bsky.social

On a mini-mission to get enough recordings of Pacific Hornero into the @cornellbirds.bsky.social's Macaulay Library that we can add it to the Merlin sound ID model. Getting after it with phones, a parabola and, most importantly, encouraging others to do the same! macaulaylibrary.org/asset/651775...

the most important question of presidents day is what did they think about birds and luckily for you chumps i've got answers birdhistory.substack.com/p/our-birdy-...

Getting ready for a really cool community-led monitoring project in shade-grown coffee and cacao farms in Ecuador and Mexico. Quick stop in #ICTC2026 first! #BirdsPlusIndex @abcbirds.bsky.social @wildlifeacoustics.com

Have you ever seen Blue Jays flighting with Crows and be like, I need to record this on eBird? Your comment could help with tracking species interactions! In this piece, we show how LLMs can be used to collect interaction data on large scales from comments on participatory science platforms. 1/3

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs xkcd.com/3204/

why do males defend territories in some species while pairs or family groups defend territories in others? then-undergrad Shreyas Arashanapalli did a fantastic project to find out, analyzing 3177 playback experiments on 264 species the best predictor? latitude academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Taxonomy and phylogeny are two sides of the same coin, but that doesn't mean they are always in agreement. I wrote a blog post on why the new Phylogeny Explorer in @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social is such a big deal in that regard, and what's in store next for us. eliotmiller.weebly.com/blog/birds-o...

If you thought regular bird listing was for nerds, wait til you get a load of phylolisting. @snacktavish.bsky.social

I've seen most of the taxonomic orders of birds out there, but I'm still missing three: kiwis, cuckoo-roller, and cariamas. Any of you all ticked all of them yet? #birds #birding

One of my favorite things in life is admiring the emergent structures of different tree species in winter

Me and Jesus, Julio, and Bobby. What a way to start your day…yo it’s like 1, 2, 3…

Sad twist of fate that I spend many dozens of hours a year processing venison so that my family can eat clean, local meat and somehow I end up basically subsisting on leftover chicken nuggets I find on the couch.

Short blog on an exciting collaboration using the #BirdsPlusIndex to document recovering biodiversity in NYC harbor. In partnership w Billion Oyster Project, Newtown Creek Alliance, & NYC Bird Alliance @newtowncreek.bsky.social @nycbirdalliance.org @abcbirds.bsky.social abcbirds.org/news/birdspl...

Definitely still in the horseshoes and hand grenades realm, but enough to catch my attention. @snacktavish.bsky.social Me: "Create a Newick string that exactly matches the topology of this phylogeny, with matching tip labels. Do not worry about branch lengths or support values." ChatGPT:

Introgression between species can shape #evolution. Study of the colorful American #warblers (Parulidae) by @kevinfpbennett.bsky.social @davetoews.bsky.social &co reveals intergeneric & interspecific introgression of genes related to carotenoid #plumage color @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/48MyfU2

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

Check out our review/perspective piece on phylogenetic diversification analysis, intended for the 75th anniversary of @systbiol.bsky.social. I had the privilege of working with great coauthors, @fhenaodiaz.bsky.social, @tvasconcelos.bsky.social and @roszenil.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

We've partnered on a groundbreaking global bird study revealing how human-driven habitat changes put biodiversity, and vital bird roles, at risk. 🐦 Dr. Alexander Lees stresses the urgent need to protect the diversity of avian roles 👉 https://bit.ly/4ixI4tl