22 December 2011

World's most fascinating species now has world's most comprehensive natural history account

In a 110 page chapter in The Birds of North America, Virginia Belloni and coauthors succinctly summarize what is known about one of the most thoroughly studied birds. The species with the widest ecological range: as common in the hottest place in contiguous US as it is in the coldest, wettest and driest; as likely to be eaten by a diamondback snake in Sonoran desert as to witness a wolverine alpine migration in Northern Rockies or to socialize with elepaio in Hawaii; that numbers in billions, but has most populations established by a handful of individuals a few generations ago; that combines unique adaptability with fascinating adaptations. The one and only. The House Finch.
    In separate news, the 2012 World Wildlife Fund's calendar of most charismatic species and places features two of our photos.

25 November 2011

Dawn Higginson's discovery of dramatic diversification in complex sperm traits in beetles is in Evolution; Blackfoot Valley wolves are the cover feature of BBC Wildlife

Dawn's comprehensive study uncovers the origin and evolutionary diversification of complex sperm morphology in Dytiscidae, a family famous for widespread sperm conjugation — where several sperm unite for motility or transport. Her upcoming Evolution paper "Convergence, recurrence and diversification of complex sperm traits in diving beetles (Dytiscidae)" reveals the discovery of an evolutionary pathway linking diversification in sperm morphology and conjugation.
    The BBC Wildlife December cover photo of the refrigerator-sized leader of an elusive Blackfoot Valley wolf pack — Alex's best (and only) neighbors during the 2009 sabbatical — highlights a feature on the recovery of this wilderness icon in the United States. Two years ago another member of this pack was scaring kids into better book-learning from the cover of a non-majors biology text.

25 October 2011

"The movie industry has its Oscars and nature photography has its BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards..."

... with this opening, hosts Mark Carwardine, Jo Wood, and Jean-Dominique Mallet revealed, at a gala black-tie ceremony at the Natural History Museum in London on October 19, 2011, that "Alexander Badyaev (USA) is a WINNER of The 2011 BBC/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition (category, +1). In 2011, more than 41,000 submissions from 95 countries were considered by an international panel of photography experts. The competition, now in its 47th year, is the world’s largest and most prestigious award for the very best in nature photography" says the press release. Read some thoughts about the image in Day's Edge Productions blog.
     Earlier the same week an overachieving squirrel from the the Cirque de la Lune troupe received the First Place Award in The 2011 National Wildlife Photography Contest. "The winning images of the competition, now in its 41st year, are selected among 27,000 entries worldwide". So, two top international awards in nature photography. It pays to study photogenic subjects...

27 September 2011

Three papers, two covers; Galleries in Discover Wildlife and BBC Magazine

Libby Landeen's second paper on the evolutionary implications of a newly discovered close association between feather growth and carotenoid pigmentation is the stunnning new cover of Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution. Functional Ecology covers Laura Stein's new paper on the evolution of eggshell architecture in rapidly evolving populations, reporting the results of continent-wide reciprocal transplants. Alex's recent Perspective on facilitated developmental variation in the evolution of complex trais is the most read paper in Auk: Internat. J. Ornithology.
     Discover Wildlife ("America's Amazing Unseen Wildlife"), Pro Photo and about about a hundred others (plus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) publish interesting (if unauthorized) selections of our images. Prestigious BBC Wildlife publishes the photoessay of our work on "rarely documented behaviours of the most common species."

22 July 2011

Our photos now hang in the offices of the United States Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in D.C.

...subconsciously inducing their inhabitants to think about wildlife deeply and often. The Honorable Secretary Kenneth Salazar and USFWS Director Daniel M. Ashe received the photos (one, two) as a gift from the State of Montana's conservation organizations when the two came to the Crown of the Continent meeting to announce the first successful nesting of wild Trumpeter Swans in northwest Montana in more than a century. The actual parents and their three famous cygnets, photographed in their remote mosquito-rich wetland two days after hatching and a week prior to the meeting, went from a nameless swamp to the White House in ten days. It's a big deal in which we played a significant part over the years. Stay tuned for the announcement (here).

9 July 2011

"Taste of Tradition" added; Alex to speak at WildPhotos2011 and ESEB2011; BBC Wildlife to feature our work

A gallery showing a curious case of cultural inheritance in Sandhill Cranes is added. In an attempt to offset the presentations by legendary luminaries in the world of photography, Alex is invited to give two talks at a prestigious international nature photography venue — the WildPhotos symposium organized every year by the Royal Geographical Society. And in the upcoming invited presentation at XIII Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology in Tuebingen, Germany Alex will review recent empirical projects seeking to investigate the evolutionary importance of emergent biological processes. Finally, following the recent lead of National Wildlife Magazine, BBC Wildlife publishes a 12 page feature on our work (out in early September), highlighting a "powerful synergy of natural history and evolutionary biology for understanding the complexities of biological world".

4 May 2011

Mandatory reading and mandatory looking

...coincide briefly as Proceedings B publishes our best paper with our best cover. The all-time stars of the Cirque de la Lune troupe on a tour of the frozen Bob Marshall Wilderness, (also highlighted in the two-page spread in in this week's National Wildlife feature "The Eyes of a Scientist"), now effortlessly demonstrate emergent features of organismal development and functionality and, in a process, make the paper the Most Read for two three four five six months in the row.

15 April 2011

Erin Morrison is awarded Graduate Fellowship

Erin wins another (second) 2011-2012 Graduate Research Fellowship for her proposed study integrating deep phylogenetic reconstructions, mathematical modelling, and biochemistry of animal coloration that promises to change the way we think about emergence of pigmentation patterns... Stay tuned.

4 April 2011

A week in review...

Laura Stein, the Lab's third EEB and College of Sciences's Oustanding Senior awardee, receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her doctoral studies of parental effects and behavioral plasticity in Alison Bell's lab. Ellen Ouellette is chosen as The 2011 EEB Galileo Circle Scholar — one of the highest awards given by the University of Arizona's College of Science (she's also the third recipient: Kevin Oh received a Graduate Galileo Award in 2007 and Rebecca Young — in 2006). The award will be presented at the Galileo Circle Dinner on April 14th. And in a strange twist of events, Alex is selected by Canon Inc., Japan as the wildlife photographer to be featured in the 2011 print and TV commercials to be filmed this May (last year's ad gallery is here). Apparently the sales in prevous years were too big to handle.

7 March 2011

Dr. Dawn Higginson joins the Lab

Dawn, whose papers hold the world record on the time "from print to texbook" (students in Fall 2010's ECOL330 could recite the difference between primary and secondary conjugation 30 days after her review introducing the concept), will join the Lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Dawn's doctoral work at Syracuse University focused on the evolution of complex sperm traits in a family of acquatic beetles (Dytiscidae) and in her postdoctoral research she plans to investigate developmental mechanisms behind the origin and evolutionary diversification of conjugation traits.

15 February 2011

Farhana Hossain accepted into the UBR Program

Funding from this competitive program will allow Farhana to continue her work at the interface of development, modeling, and biochemistry of carotenoids in animal pigmentation. The award follows a long list of her previous distinctions. Farhana is the 14th UBRP-supported student working in the Lab.

5 February 2011

Comprehensive "Mammals of Montana" to be published in 2011

The book — a collaboration between Kerry R. Foresman (text) and Alex Badyaev (photos) — is "the first comprehensive account of the 109 species of mammals of this state, now revised to include new research information accumulated during the past decade. The taxonomy, ecology, behavior and reproductive biology of all species found from Glacier National Park in the north to Yellowstone National Park in the south, and from the dense coniferous forests of the west to the open grasslands of the east are discussed. Detailed anatomical descriptions and photographs provide information on coloration patterns, body measurements, and distinctive physical characteristics for easy identification. Updated distribution maps describe the occurrence of each species" (From the back cover). The 340 page book is published by Mountain Press with the "only in Montana" cover photo.

7 November 2010

The Beartooth pipit is the cover of Journal of Experimental Biology; The "Bedtime TV" photo is the National Wildlife cover story on science and photography

The "Beartooth pipit", once made famous by Wild Imagination Journal and a short stint as a Climate Action Commission (EU) poster, continues its life as a perfect Journal of Experimental Biology cover for Jay Storz's fascinating review of plasticity and genetics of adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia in vertebrates.
     And the "Bedtime TV" photo opens the upcoming National Wildlife six-page feature on science, natural history, and photography of yours truly — "The Eyes of a Scientist".

1 October 2010

Dr. Virginia Belloni joins the Lab

Virginia, whose recent research associate positions included Equipe Ecologie Evolutive at Université Dijon Bourgogne (France), STRI (Panama), University of Florence, and University of Urbino (Italy), brings with her a unique blend of expertise in evolutionary immunology (1,2), neurophysiology (3, 4), and endocrinology (5, 6), interest in evolutionary aspects of animal behavior (7), and extensive fieldwork experience in Seychelles, Panama, and Italy. Her current work in the lab focuses on reconstruction of lipid enzymatic pathways in eukaryotes.

20 July 2010

The social network study is in NY Times, Science, Nature, Smithsonian, Current Biology, BBC Wildlife, on NPR; Journal of Experimental Zoology gives us our seventh, best yet, shrew cover

Kevin Oh's research on fitness consequences of social networking is all over the news with the latest features in Nature, New York Times, Science, Current Biology, ASN Forum, UA News, NPR (audio), Último Segundo, Bowdoin College News, Smithsonian Magazine, Biological Physhology Newslink, ScienceReligion Today, BBC Wildlife, Forskning (Norway), QUO (Spain), and other places.
    And with the cover highlighting Rebecca Young's comprehensive study of the role of developmental plasticity in evolutionary divergence, the Journal of Experimental Zoology: Molecular and Developmental Evolution sweeps its mesmerized readers to a magic fairyland of tall mosses and gigantic dragonflies piloted around spruce saplings by tiny shrews.