News

Last week marked the final nestling banding of the 2024 Boulder Chickadee Study field season wrapping the 6th year of the study. The team of Will, Sara, Olivia, Ajay, Nikki, Blake, and Sage counted 464 eggs, banded 431 nestlings, and 98 new adults. 32 birds previously banded here in Boulder...

Congratulations to Olivia and her co-authors Kathryn, Angela, Harriet Leeson and Carrie Branch for publishing a recent paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. After initially embarking on her undergraduate career as a Violin Performance major, Olivia completed her EBIO degree and honors thesis in our lab last year. For...

The 2024 field season has been a busy one - here are some updates from members of the lab currently in the field: Sara: It has been a wild and exciting field season so far! With the addition of our new nestboxes on flagstaff mountain it is gearing up to...

Congrats to Taylor Lab alum Dr. Sheela Turbek who just received TWO early career awards! Sheela is a 2024 awardee of the Early Career Research Award from the American Society of Naturalists as well as an Early Professionals Award from the American Ornithological Society. Sheela completed her PhD in the...

Georgy's most recent work on the genetics of variation in spatial cognition in food-caching chickadees was just published in Current Biology . This work is the product of a collabroation with Dr. Valdimir Pravosudov and his lab at the University of Nevada Reno , with contributions from other lab members...

The good news keeps coming! Nikki (Documenting responses to experimental and natural nest intrusions in two species of cavity-nesting chickadee) and Will (Using acoustic and genomic data to evaluate the taxonomic status of Northern Pygmy Owls) were recently notified that they will receive funding for their work from the Colorado...

Congrats to Sara Padula, a second-year PhD student in the lab, who was granted a 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or in STEM education...

Scott recently spent part of his sabbatical visiting Jay in Gamboa, Panama. During his visit, Scott gave the Tupper Seminar at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and spent some time with the RaMP-UP Fellows . Other than eating delicious food, Jay and Scott also spent time observing a white-necked jacobin...

Congrats to Sara, Nikki and Will for their recently awarded research Grants! Sara was awarded the Zena Hunter Andrews Graduate Student Award for her project "Comparing the genetics of spatial memory in two species of food caching chickadee" Nikki was awarded a Denver Field Ornithologists research grant for her proposal...

Scott will be participating as a panelist in an upcoming workshop focused on inclusion and diversity in scientific fieldwork at Yale University on May 13 and 14, 2024. The brief schedule is below and you can follow the link to register! https://peabody.yale.edu/events/workshop-inclusive-future-scientific-fieldwork