Andrés Cuervo

A riddle wrapped in an enigma: parasitic lice as clues to the evolutionary puzzle of Sapayoa (Aves) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... | #BiologyLetters #Evolution #MolecularBiology #Taxonomy

Really looking forward to #SSB2026 in Baton Rouge and catch up with folks at LSU @systbiol.bsky.social

High-resolution land-use maps from 1960 to 2100 Harmonized land-use and land-cover datasets that include past and future periods are key to solving sustainability issues, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. However, existing harmonized pr...

High-resolution land-use maps from 1960 to 2100 🌎🧪 🌐 www.cell.com/one-earth/fu...

Cumulative numbers and rates in new species over time across living organisms. (A) The total (cumulative) number of species known in each year and (B) the number of species newly described each year. The analysis includes 1.9 million species, including only extant, accepted names, and excluding viruses, fossil taxa, and species with unknown publication dates.

This is news that makes me happy. It really feels most of the time that taxonomy is in a bad place. But in reality, it seems that in the last decades, the rate of species description has been the highest it ever was! 🧪

Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Depictions of evolution where a phylogeny often has humans on the far right or top can give an impression of evolution being progressive of leading to ‘increased complexity’ when it does not. Top figure shows such a phylogeny which can look the same as ‘the March of progress’ depiction most commonly used to depict evolution (showing monkey to man erroneous march of evolution) - instead swiveling some nodes on a phylogeny where humans are shown closer to the center (which doesn’t change relationships) can lead to better ‘tree thinking’

New post by me on #MITPressReader @mitpress.bsky.social

On the 100th anniversary of the #ScopesMonkeyTrial
the ways we depict #evolution can still give an erroneous progressive view (that evolution leads to humans or ‘increased complexity’).

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-our-pictu...

Thanks so much for the thoughtful thread, Andrew. As it's impossible to predict the future, variety of preparations might be key.

Photos of extracted: top Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus); and bottom Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) brains. For each photo, white arrows point to OB (olfactory bulbs) and TeO (optic tectum).

We have successfully used immersion fixation for heads of Cathartes and Coragyps with the rest of the body used for skins, skeletons, and spirit specimens. I will add that for most comparative neuroanatomy an n of 3-6 is fine. Big series are only needed for sex or seasonal variation within species

1/ 🧵 I'm at #BOUasm25 A day at the museum to talk about using natural history collections to build inclusive community.
Natural history #museums are undergoing a renaissance of novel research.
However -who has access to collections? -who is being left out of biodiversity research?
#ornithology

Our final speaker for session 3 is Joe Wynn bringing us “Whole-genome resequencing reveals the origin of a rapidly emerging ‘reverse’ songbird migration” 🐦🧬

@joewynnbirds.bsky.social #BOUasm25 #ornithology

John McCormack: insights from the Mexican Bird Resurvey Project #BOUasm #ornithology

heads up! #BOUasm

small, olive green passerine bird with a yellow head and parrot-like billed beak, perched on a lichen-covered tree branch

1/🧵 Today at #BOUasm25, I’m presenting on the ‘ō‘ū 🦜 a parrot billed-like #Hawaiian #honeycreeper, last seen in 1989. We dive into its population ecology and investigate – did it interbreed with other parrot-billed Hawaiian honeycreepers prior its extinction? doi:10.1098/rsbl.2025.0265 #ornithology

century long shifts in neotropical birds's morphology comparing collections from the 1910' and 2020's @nataliaperez-a.bsky.social #BOUasm #ornithology #evolution @bou.org.uk

1/6 Today I will be presenting my masters research on the #phylogeny of the waterfowl family Anatidae via the #BOUasm25 conference on BlueSky. What came first, the duck, the goose or the swan? #ornithology #systematics #waterfowl #ducks #geese #swans
1/6

Natural history collections are a time stamp of now.
In Taiwan, there is an average of 1500-2000 roadkill cases reported per year. With the increasing public engagement, we can utilize these deaths to their full potential.
#BOUasm25 #ornithology 🧵1/6

We move to finish session 2 with keynote speaker JC Buckner, discussing “Ducking & diving: the role of adaptation in waterfowl macroevolution” 🦆

#BOUasm25 #ornithology #waterfowl #ducks

I learned quite a bit from your talk, thank you!

Any updated protocols or recommendations for fixing liquid specimens? We've been using ethanol for quite sometime now (we actually switched from formaline back in the day)

A slide entitled Neuroscience at the Museum with two bullet points and three images. The first bullet point states that all behaviour is a product of the physiology and anatomy of the brain. The images below are photos of: a sharp-tailed grouse in a courtship display posture with its purple throat sacs and yellow eyebrows flared; a bright red and green king parrot perched on the back of a chair and holding a nut in its left foot that it is chewing on; and a flock of snow geese on an early morning with dozens of geese standing on a field and flying across. Below those images is the second bullet point" brain anatomy can provide novel insights into bird behavior.

All aspects of bird behaviour are a product of the anatomy and physiology of their brains. Brain anatomy can therefore provide new insights into bird behaviour.

Today at #BOU2025, I will discuss how museum specimens can potentially be used to study bird brains.

#ornithology #neuroskyence
1/6

We join Shriya Uday in-person, for “The global palette: the role of colour in the wildlife trade” 🎨

@shriyaaaaa.bsky.social #BOUasm25 #wildlife

Cassie Stoddard'a talk was really insightful and colorful:
"sure, we're living exciting times to study the genome, but also to study the phenome, the birds' phenotypes using collections"

#BOUasm25 #ornithology #evolution @bou.org.uk

We’re back! 😄

We‘re kicking off session 2 online with Mary Caswell Stoddard for her keynote “Feathers and eggs: leveraging ornithological collections to explore the evolution of colour, pattern and structure in the avian world” 🪺

Gavin Thomas joins us as Chair.
#BOUasm25 #ornithology #eggs

Lucia Snyderman finishes off our first session with her presentation “Museum collections reveal Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus) palaeoecology in England and offer reintroduction insights” 💡

@aukwardlucia.bsky.social  #BOUasm25 #palaeontology #palaeoecology

We now move on to join Andrés M. Cuervo for his presentation “Century-spanning collections reveal ecological change and phenotypic shifts in Neotropical birds” 🐦

@amcuervo.bsky.social #BOUasm25 #ecology

“From specimens to solutions: the evolving role and current challenges of natural history collections” Great keynote talk from Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social - I was impressed hearing about the mummy birds 😮

@nhm-london.bsky.social @bou.org.uk #BOUasm25 #ornithology #museums

Do older birds claim better territories, and does this drive age biases in space over time? Woodman et al. use 45 years of data to suggest that habitat quality - not age - shapes spatial demography.

Read now ahead of print!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

Hybridization mitigates climate change risk in mountainous birds Scheffers, B. R. et al. The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people. Science 354, aaf7671 (2016). Aitken, S. N. & Whitlock, M. C. Assisted gene flow to facilitate local adaptation to climate change. Annu. Rev...

Hybridization mitigates climate change risk in mountainous birds
->Nature | More from Lil Dr Glen EcoChat at BigEarthData.ai

New work out from our @islandbirdproject.bsky.social team lead by @raquelponti.bsky.social

We will be presenting this at the upcoming conference #BOUasm25
"A day at the museum: collections-based
ornithological research in a changing world" on BlueSky, 18th of Nov.

It’s been a long wait for this fantastic @bou.org.uk event:

“A day at the museum: collections-based ornithological research in a changing world” #BOUasm25

🔈 #BOUasm25 KEYNOTE

Mary Caswell Stoddard
Princeton University, USA

Feathers and eggs: leveraging ornithological collections to explore the evolution of colour, pattern and structure in the avian world

Keynote abstracts: bou.org.uk/conferenc...

#ornithology 🪶

🔈 #BOUasm25 KEYNOTE

Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social
Natural History Museum, UK

Natural history collections in the 21st century: Challenges and opportunities

Submit your abstract: bou.org.uk/event/a-d...

#ornithology 🪶