Gavin Leighton

Ornithology is all about the process.

#GoBills | #BillsMafia

+1 recommendation to see if your institution has a gradescope account.

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. https://cnn.it/3WcFnDd

GitHub Copilot – RStudio User Guide

In terms of seamless integration into RStudio I've heard (but can't personally attest to) Github Copilot:

docs.posit.co/ide/user/ide...

Though you do have to go through a couple tedious steps to get it up and running.

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

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...

ggplot2 4.0.0 A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

our paper on how light pollution affects bird vocal behavior is out today in Science!!

w/ @brentpease.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This may sound like exaggeration but we genuinely do not get teaching credit nor monetary compensation for having undergrads do research projects in our labs.

🥳 New paper out in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society!

Manakin’s moving melody: the interplay between courtship dance display and vocalization as a predictor of hybridization in manakins (Aves: Pipridae)
academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

#ornithology

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

Further consolidating control over federal research funding under Russell Vought and a cadre of apparatchiks.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

a figure from the linked paper, showing extremely high rates of species diversification in the higher latitudes, higher diversification in the passerines (and in the early history of the oscines), and a marked (but unevenly distributed) uptick in diversification towards the present day

New bird tree who dis.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)

Devastated to see the NSF postdoctoral research fellowship in biology archives. This is a transformative creative opportunity and a path to the professorship for many (including myself). Postdocs are highly trained and often in the newest techniques which spur innovation.
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

The “watch on the beach” argument against evolution?

“With these considerations, we expect to fund through the 4th percentile.”

There it is, in black and white, the destruction of cancer research in the US.

Exclusive: NIH to dismiss dozens of grant reviewers to align with Trump priorities The move would undo years of work, leaving advisory councils understaffed, and without the full expertise needed for reviews.

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding.

NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

String manipulation is a critical daily task for bioinformaticians.
Here is a cheatsheet using stringr: rstudio.github.io/cheatsheets...
I probably use stringr::str_replace() once every other day...
to clean up metadata (of course!) #rstats

Image of the USA and the scaled abundance of species next to a dominance hierarchy.

I will be presenting research on how the abundance of mimics and models affect the social performance and competitiveness of these groups. If you're keen on behavior and geospatial data this might be of particular interest. That is happening tomorrow, Thursday (07/10) at 10:45 AM in Chesapeake B.

Poster depicting research on sexual selection in birds. "Plumage and size dimorphism are evolutionarily unlinked and associated with disparate factors across birds"

A couple presentations from the lab at #ABS2025! The first is a poster by Catherine Alverson during the first poster session, tonight (07/09). Catherine will be discussing her research on the evolution of dimorphism across thousands of bird species.

Senate version of "beautiful" bill will "kill" America's clean energy sector, experts say New taxes on wind and solar are "truly bizarre, a self-defeating measure."

“I hate to say it," says Yale energy economist Kenneth Gillingham, but the Senate version of Trump's big tax bill "would kill America's renewable energy market.” It's "truly bizarre, a self-defeating measure," adds Princeton's ‪@jessedjenkins.com‬. By @hencarnell.bsky.social via @motherjones.com

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years.

NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

I guess (fortunately for us) their attempts at character assassination are as weak as their claims about de-extincting species.

This is such obvious bullshit and a waste of everyone’s time.

I’m morbidly curious though, why they are attempting this? Do they think these sites will eventually show up high on the list in a Google search? Or if they publish enough AI slop that future AI slop will regurgitate it?

AvianLexiconAtlas: A database of descriptive categories of English-language bird names around the world Common names of species are important for communicating with the general public. In principle, these names should provide an accessible way to engage with and identify species. The common names of spe...

ooooh new paper out today. a couple of years ago a big group of us were like "hey let's spend a few weeks painstakingly looking up the sources of every official bird common name" and as of today, you too can join us in our ornitholetymological (yes i made that up) rabbit-hole:

IMHO the Amber Temple is the coolest place in the campaign. I think if played right it's perfectly esoteric and mysterious, but perhaps some lore can be pieced together. And enterprising DMs can add to it in meaningful and cool ways.

Though I did work in some of the non-canonical stuff like the Fanes of Barovia because I think it ties in really well with some of the backstory of the main antagonist.

In the CoS campaigns I'm running I've simplified NPC stuff precisely because of the background moving parts and also because several NPCs don't seem even moderately critical for the story (e.g. Mad Mary & Gertruda).

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.

RFK Jr's "MAHA" report is filled with references to studies that literally do not exist, or that completely misinterpret the studies' findings.

“We did not publish a paper.. on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title,” says one cited researcher.

www.notus.org/health-scien...

Congrats again!

Eppur si muove.

Black Holeatzin