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Gavin Leighton

@gavinleighton.bsky.social
1.3K followers 678 following 99 posts

Evolutionary Biologist & Behavioral Ecologist, Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo State. Studying mimicry in woodpeckers and the evolution of social behavior in birds. Opinions my own. He/him.

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Reposted by Gavin Leighton
Jeremy Van Cleve @vancleve.theoretical.bio · 29/09/2026
My group is recruiting a Ph.D student for Fall 2027! We're a friendly group of mathematically-minded and computationally-inspired biologists studying topics including social evolution, host-pathogen interactions, genetics, and demography. See vancleve.theoretical.bio for more info!
vancleve.theoretical.bio
van cleve research group
Van Cleve Research Group – theoretical evolution & ecology at the University of Kentucky
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Ultimately, this letter from NSF is an announcement that universities will be funded a lot less and politically-connected industry will be funded a lot more. Fancy words around old-fashioned corruption.
nsf.gov
NSF leadership in a new golden age of science
The U.S. National Science Foundation was established in 1950 to keep American discovery at the frontier. That mission has not changed. The science and technology ecosystem around it has...
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Grantmaking has leveled off, so it looks like NSF will make around 6,200 new grants—down from an average of ~11,000. That's a historic low, not seen since the 1980s, when NSF was a far smaller organization. Left was our projection three weeks ago, right is the current data.
Previous plot of NSF new grants projected FY26 would be ~6100Current data for total new grants at NSF
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Nature @nature.com · 20/08/2026
The US National Science Foundation will award about 30% fewer new research grants this fiscal year than in the last one, Nature has learnt. go.nature.com/3UcGoNW
go.nature.com
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
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Anna Allen @akallen10.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New NSF BIO solicitation is live.... this replaces the previous IOS, MCB, DEB solicitation www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Holy shit. “the final overall impact score or percentile on which the categorization was based would not be released to any of these parties. “
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Birds of the World | The Cornell Lab @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The Cornell Lab invites applications for Edward W. Rose Postdoctoral Fellowships. These competitive awards support innovative, independent research by early-career scholars of exceptional promise. Two to four awards are made in each cycle. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32334
academicjobsonline.org
Cornell University, Lab of Ornithology
Job #AJO32334, WDR-00059934 Rose Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, US
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
If you're at #AOS26 and want to hear about continent-wide tests of mimicry predictions in woodpeckers and the curious results, I'll be speaking tomorrow (08/06) in the Behavior 3 session at 4 PM (room 163)!
Image of the United States with a color scale of relative abundance of two woodpecker species. Next to it is a stylized dominance hierarchy from a specific location in New York State.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23/07/2026
1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.
nytimes.com
Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)
Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.
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Jake Berv @jakeberv.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1
rdcu.be
Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space
Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...
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Ben Allen @evodynamics.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
bostonglobe.com
Trump administration limits student visas to four years, changing longstanding policy - The Boston Globe
The new rule, which also restricts the international students’ ability to transfer schools or change majors without approval in their first year, will go into effect in mid-September.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Submitted a grant recently to IOS in the NSF and got this recent email. I’ve tried to stay up to date on the how the NSF has had to “restructure” after draconian budget cuts, but has anyone heard if IOS has been closed? The IOS solicitation/webpage is still nominally open.
An email received saying that a submitted grant has been reassigned somewhere else in the NSF
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 29/06/2026
Sotomayor’s dissent is an obituary for science, NIH, and NSF. “Seldom, if ever, has this Court worked such a profound bait and switch on a coequal branch: For more than 90 years, Congress believed, with this Court’s express approval, that it was allowed to create a workable Govern- ment…”
Today's decision profoundly undermines this reliance and, as a result, undercuts one side of the balance that the political branches struck. Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President's hands: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with responsibility for managing the Nation's energy supply, see 42 U.S. C. §7171(b)(1); the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which protects Americans against harms caused by dangerous goods, see
15 U.S. C. §2053(a); the Chemical Safety Board, tasked with investigating chemical disasters, see 42 U.S. C.
§7412(r)(6)(B); the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, responsible for the regulation of nuclear power, see 42 U.S. C. 885841(a), (c), (e); and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), charged with ensuring the integrity of the civil service, see 5 U. S. C. §1202. The list of agencies
entially modified by today's decision goes on.
Seldom, if ever, has this Court worked such a profound bait and switch on a coequal branch: For more than 90 years, Congress believed, with this Court's express ap-proval, that it was allowed to create a workable Govern-ment, including by granting certain agencies tasked with certain responsibilities some independence from Presidential control.
In rejecting that project, after decades of prom-
ising the po
ical branches that structures like the FTC's
were permissible, the Court creates an Executive Branch that Congress never dreamed of establishing and that it now has little hope of ever reining in. Cf. Learning Re-sources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U. S. 229, 244-245 (2026) (opin-
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Has anyone at Colossal provided even a remotely plausible about how de-extinction is supposed to work without habitat protection or restoration? If they don't have some robust plan then you can probably bet on this company going under at some point and all these samples being lost.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 22/06/2026
Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. scim.ag/4xY2KCm
science.org
Exclusive: NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say
Unexpected shift in funds has meant sharp drop in grants this fiscal year
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Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
NSF uses staffing cuts to strip Inspector General's office of its ability to investigate research misconduct www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Exclusive: NSF watchdog unit is no longer investigating research misconduct
New policy hands universities the reins in probing allegations against faculty
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Susana Wadgymar🌿🔬 @smwadgymar.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Truly the death of science as we know it, as well as any societies and journals dependent on funding from U.S. scientists. **Public comments accepted through July 13.** 🧪 🌍 Email and call your representative every day, on top of leaving public comments here: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
federalregister.gov
Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposes to revise the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance to improve government- wide policies and requirements related to the management of grants, co...
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026
Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.
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Ross @rossengineer.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Worked at JPL while studying at Caltech back in the early 1990s. This is a nightmare-level theft of a planetary science & exploration powerhouse. It makes no sense whatsoever. Republicans' continued vandalism of NASA's science centers is intolerable.
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Jingyi Yang @jyang19.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Happy to see my PhD work on birdsong complexity published today! doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 🐦‍⬛ 🎶 ⬇️ Why are some birdsongs simple and some extremely complex? The answer is long thought to be ‘sexual selection favouring complex signals’. But - really?
doi.org
Song complexity in suboscine birds: evolutionary drivers and ecological constraints
Abstract. Acoustic signal complexity varies widely in animals, from single notes to highly sophisticated vocal displays. In birds, vocal complexity can evo
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Nathan Butterworth @butterworthbugs.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
How do courtship dances evolve? Paper out now in Behavioral Ecology 🪰 "Courtship choreography is stabilized among genetically isolated populations" doi.org/10.1093/behe... Video of our study species the dancing dune fly (Apotropina ornatipennis) below.
youtu.be
The courtship display of Apotropina ornatipennis (Diptera: Chloropidae)
YouTube video by Nathan
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
If you click through to the 'contact' info for this program you'll see the contact email is "xlabs@nsf.gov" and the contact phone number is "(blank)". The actual text of this solicitation is barely coherent. 100% a scheme to funnel critical NSF money to private companies with no oversight.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
This is basically harassment of scholars willing to question the Trump administration’s targeting of Chinese colleagues. Innes already had the FBI investigate his lab and was given the all clear. Now USDA is shutting down the Lab, which focuses on making fungus-resistant plants.
IU plant microbiologist Roger Innes says the move Thursday evening is the latest instance of retaliation for a letter he wrote last fall on behalf of Yunqing Jian, a plant scientist postdoc at the University of Michigan who had pled guilty to smuggling biological material and making false statements. The letter to Jian's attorney, intended to be used at her sentencing, argued that what the Chinese postdoc had transported was not dangerous, but she was still ultimately deported.
Her conviction triggered an investigation of Youhuang Xiang, a Chinese postdoc in Innes' lab, that led to Xiang also pleading guilty last month to smuggling loops of DNA known as plasmids. He was also deported.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
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]
Phylogeny of bird species in the paper. The rings around the phylogeny represent traits. The silhouettes represent bird species in the paper.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 28/04/2026
More details on the firing of the National Science Board. The NSF now has no director, deputy director, or board. They have issued almost no new awards in 2026. The plan appears to be to completely destroyed the agency. The details are horrifying and have Russ Vought written all over them.
insidehighered.com
Board Ouster Raises Further Concerns About NSF’s Future
The White House axed all members of the board overseeing the National Science Foundation Friday, leaving the agency with no board, director or deputy director. It finally provided a reason Monday afte...
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Mike Kaspari @mikekaspari.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
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.
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Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
It was.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Are you (or something you know) looking for a PhD? Like trait macroevolution but also yearn for an applied topic? Think plants are neat? Want to live in beautiful northeast Scotland?! 🌊🐬⛰️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 I'm advertising a PhD in my lab! Deadline April 22, email me any questions. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
QUARTILES DLA CASE: Trait-based drivers of the ornamental plant trade at University of Aberdeen on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - QUARTILES DLA CASE: Trait-based drivers of the ornamental plant trade at University of Aberdeen , listed on FindAPhD.com
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Kyle Horton @kyle-horton.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
🚨 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
aeroecolab.com
Purdue AeroEco Lab Opportunities
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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
In the last two weeks, 1% of new NSF awards were in biology. Just one grant of 97. One. Biology in the US is on hold until there’s a regime change.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Well damn, this is cool. Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre-Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea | Chia et al., 2026 | Ecology Letters onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre‐Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea
We use topological data analysis to reveal a persistent morphological gap in a major group of songbirds (superfamily Passeroidea). The gap remained unoccupied for millions of years, even though nearb...
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Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Russ Vought hates American innovation and scientific leadership and is committed to destroying it
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Mike Feigin 🥯 @mikefeigin.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Hey Buffalo!! Despite the fact that we have been relegated to the “& MORE” category while Madison gets two mentions, we are going to be LOUD as hell!! Join us March 7th, 1PM, Niagara Square! 😂😂
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Dan Baldassarre @evornithology.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
This is why Democrats rightly didn't stand in response to Stephen Miller's gross pledge of mindless nationalism at the State of the Union last night. When these crimes are being perpetrated by the state, the citizenship status of the victims is irrelevant. www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/b...
investigativepost.org
Blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol dies in Buffalo.
A nearly blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol miles from his home dies in Buffalo after having been missing for nearly a week.
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
But, as they say, there is no time like the present [OK, maybe the 1930s if you want to nitpick] But, with some data wrangling, my first NSF Funding Curves! 2/3
A line plot with the numbers of NSF awards for fiscal years 2021-2026. The curve for fiscal year 2026 is quite a bit lower than those for 2021-2025 while the curve for fiscal year 2026 (in red) is much lower than all through the same date.
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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
If you thought regular bird listing was for nerds, wait til you get a load of phylolisting. @snacktavish.bsky.social
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
executions in the street.
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Alex Shephard @alexshephard.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
"Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” her mother said. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.” www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...
startribune.com
‘She was an amazing human being:’ Mother identifies woman shot, killed by ICE agent
Renee Nicole Good, 37, lived in the Twin Cities with her partner.
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Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Y'all, I just got out of the NSF-BIO webinar where they explained changes to peer review. It's not good. 🧪 scienceforeveryone.science/changes-to-n...
scienceforeveryone.science
Changes to NSF peer review
They're not good. At all.
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Chris Balakrishnan @evolutionpirate.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
A good time for a reminder that the BIO Directorate will hold a Virtual Office Hour on Thursday www.nsf.gov/events/nsf-b...
nsf.gov
NSF BIO Virtual Office Hour: Updates from the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences
Please join the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences for a virtual office hour on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, at 1 p.m. Eastern time.
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Leslie Rissler @ljrissler.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
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” 🙃
Boxing up the NSF at Eisenhower Av for the forced relocation. Boxes have “Details Matter” signage.
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Kirsty MacLeod @kjmacleod.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
New paper out now in @jexpbiol.bsky.social! Led by star PhD student @miaryras.bsky.social, we tested the effects of winter warming (a constant increase as well as fluctuating temps - see pic) on common wall lizard behaviour and physiology. journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...
Diagram showing experimental design of an overwintering temperature assay in lizards. We implemented a cool winter, a warm winter, and a treatment where the temp fluctuated between these two.
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Yawako @yawaguchi.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.
yawak.jp
PhyloWeaver – Interactive phylogenetic tree editor
Edit and visualize phylogenetic trees directly in your browser. PhyloWeaver lets you interactively rearrange tree topologies and export high-quality figures for publications and presentations.
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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Looking for a PhD opportunity? I'm hoping to recruit someone to my group at Durham University to work on a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships... Get in touch if you want to chat!
The Durham cathedralA male smoky rubyspot damselfly
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Dr. Elizabeth Santos @lizmillermacroevo.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
New paper on deep-sea fish diversity out now in @sse-evolution.bsky.social, with @cmartinez.bsky.social and @sarahtfried.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
academic.oup.com
Distinct evolutionary signatures underlie body shape diversity across deep sea habitats
Abstract. The deep sea is known for extreme biological conditions such as high pressure, little-to-no solar light and cold temperatures. Despite these chal
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Buffalo Bills @buffalobillsnfl.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Ornithology is all about the process. #GoBills | #BillsMafia
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CNN @cnn.com · 30/09/2025
What do you get when you cross a blue jay with a green jay? That’s not the start of a joke, but the subject of a new study that aims to describe a hybrid bird never encountered before in the wild. cnn.it/3WcFnDd
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Dr. Stepfanie Aguillón 😷 @s-m-aguillon.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
The first Aguillon Lab paper is officially out in early view at Evolution!! Led by postdoc @devonderaad.bsky.social, we’ve explored the hybrid zone between black-headed and rose-breasted grosbeaks in the Great Plains. #ornithology #hybridization #speciation #evolution doi.org/10.1093/evol...
Figure 1A from the paper shows the distribution of black-headed (western) and rose-breasted grosbeaks (eastern) throughout North America. Small illustrations of males of each species are shown. Black-headed has a rusty orange breast and black head, while rose-breasted has a small reddish bib with a bright white belly. There is an inset map of South Dakota showing the transect across the hybrid zone
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