Kevin Bennett

I'll be there

Yes our learning management system is ClassWorks, but to manage your roster you have to go to Socrates. But students register through Einstein+. And to enter grades you have to go to Gradify. Except if the student is graduating, then you have to use Gradly. Oh and classrooms are managed through Bluo

Not every bird lives up to both its common and scientific names.

#evobio #popgen 🧪

Thanks Jess!

A photo from the bank of the Changuinola River in a hilly area, rainforest on both sides.

So what does this mean for plumage introgression? It could mean that we’ve caught this situation as gene flow is temporarily slowed at the river before it continues. Or it could point to geographic variation in female preference or some other unusual scenario. Either would be pretty interesting.

Finally, we ran demographic models to estimate gene flow and found a similar result. Higher gene flow upriver than downriver. But in both areas, there is plenty of gene flow across the river.

Second, population structure showed a river effect, but only in the lower reaches of the Changuinola where it is widest. Upriver, there was hardly any population structure. This general pattern mirrors findings from some of the world’s largest rivers, but on a much smaller scale.

What did we find? First, across all sites there was an isolation-by-distance effect, but opposite-bank populations were significantly more divergent than expected given their distance.

Pie charts on the map show mostly yellow males east of the river and mostly white males west of the river.

We used RADseq data from ~200 birds along the river to look at population structure and gene flow, testing the hypothesis that the river is a strong barrier, thus preventing introgression.

I posted a thread on the genetic basis of the trait last year (see below). Now we wanted to look at a longstanding mystery: if it is selected for, why has it not crossed the river? Color forms are almost completely restricted to opposite riverbanks. bsky.app/profile/kevi...

Map of western Panama--yellow plumage is spreading into white-collared manakin populations.

Manakins are under strong sexual selection for male traits, and in Panama, female white-collared manakins seem to prefer the yellow plumage of golden-collared manakins. That has led to one-way introgression of yellow plumage, but only as far as the Changuinola River, near the Costa Rican border.

The study species: manakins in the genus Manacus. They do acrobatic courtship dances and make wing-snap sounds to woo females.

Impact of a putative riverine barrier on genomic population structure and gene flow in the presence of sexual selection Abstract. Gene flow connects populations and facilitates the exchange of alleles, impacting speciation and adaptation. In western Panama, lekking golden-co

New paper published! How does a mid-size river impact gene flow and population structure, including when there is an adaptive sexual trait present on one bank but not the other? With Peri Bolton, Robb Brumfield (@limpkin.bsky.social), Jerry Wilkinson, and Mike Braun.
doi.org/10.1093/evol...

I lived like three blocks from there for a couple of years.

Congrats! Looks fascinating.

I think the elimination of the EMA is in the proposed budget, so not part of this bill but would be in the Interior appropriations bill that will come up later this year. Unless you've seen info about it being in this one?

Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration across Lepidoptera https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661542v1

My three-year-old calls Carolina wrens "Carolina friends."

Super cool!

This one's a winner.

In my subfield, how much of a thing are "honest signals" as drivers of sexual ornaments is a major one.

Tss tss tss tss tss tss

Blackcap?

Maybe with a hint of GWWA?

Nothing pairs better with red wine and lamb than getting tenure. Thanks @psubiodept.bsky.social (and all the colleagues, mentors and mentees along the way)!

And her vote would not have made the difference. If everyone had been present and she voted no it would have been 51-49. She needed two other Republicans (Flake and Collins perhaps).

Yes, in the final vote she voted present as a courtesy to Daines who was in favor but could not make it. But she voted against cloture and if they had rescheduled the vote so Daines could make it, she would have voted no.

Brilliant blue male indigo bunting being held by a trained bander on a gorgeous spring morning

For the past 10 yrs I have trained students and collected mark-recap data from non-breeding birds at #konza. Today we pulled up stakes… removed as much evidence this ever happened as possible. Bittersweet. Nature gave me this gift.

I'll always respect Murkowski for her vote against Kavanaugh.