Rachel Watson designated me LAMP fellow of the month and wrote a really kind article about how I learned about Problem-based Learning this summer at the Science Initiative Summer Institute, planned to enact it in Genetics, but then ended up teaching General Ecology. I am waiting on the end-of-semester surveys to see how implementing this active learning technique was received by the students, but I think I saw positive results on their ecological reasoning skills on exams!

Domonique and I attended IOC 2018 in Vancouver, BC. Domonique presented a poster on the latest in Cardinalidae plumage and hybridization–she has found some patterns that I am excited about!

I gave a speed talk and e-poster on genome-wide divergence patterns in Passerina and Cyanocompsa.

I presented preliminary results from my study of genome-wide divergence in hybridizing and non-hybridizing Passerina at AOS 2018 in Tucson. I’m pretty excited about these plots, even though they seem boring–these buntings have been breaking all my hypotheses, but here they are matching predictions! Lazuli and Indigo buntings hybridize and also have the lowest overall Fst (from allopatric specimens). Varied and Painted buntings are sympatric but do not hybridize, and they are overall more divergent. The two Cyanocompsa species are completely allopatric and have the highest overall divergence. Stay tuned for Manhattan plots.