News

Eva and Sam participate in the UROP Sidewalk Symposium!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 20:46:44 +0000

Eva and Sam participate in the UROP Sidewalk Symposium! Scott Anthony Taylor Fri, 10/10/2025 - 14:46

Closing out the Research & Innovation week at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is the UROP Sidewalk Symposium. This year Sam and Eva both participated, sharing drawings of their honors thesis work, which was funded with UROP grants last summer. Awesome to see chickadees in chalk!

Sam's UROP funded honors thesis work is focused on understanding the distribution, genetics, and impacts of scaly-leg mites that we sometimes find on chickadees in Boulder County!

Eva's UROP funded honors thesis work is focused on understanding whether parental feeding behavior differs between mountain and black-capped chickadees in Boulder County.

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GREEBs 2025 - colorful, engaging, and fun!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 14:14:58 +0000

GREEBs 2025 - colorful, engaging, and fun! Scott Anthony Taylor Thu, 10/02/2025 - 08:14

The 52nd Annual meeting of the Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists took place at the University of Colorado Mountain Research Station Sept 26 - 28, 2025. Surrounded by yellow and orange aspens, the weekend was filled with interesting and engaging talks on topics ranging from the impacts of fire retardant to the genetics and physiology of high-elevation adaptation!

The keynotes speakers this year, Dr. Jon Velotta (University of Denver) and Dr. Sisimac Duchicela (�鶹��Ѱ��), gave engaging and fascinating talks on Friday and Saturday evenings. The first ever GREEBS S'mores took place on Friday and Trivia took place on Saturday!

We're looking forward to another awesome meeting in 2026!

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Kathryn's final thesis chapter is accepted in Evolution!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:07:34 +0000

Kathryn's final thesis chapter is accepted in Evolution! Scott Anthony Taylor Mon, 09/29/2025 - 12:07

Congratulations to Kathryn and her co-authors for the recent acceptance of her final thesis chapter in Evolution. The manuscript, titled Extensive local introgression despite rare contemporary hybridization between two backyard songbirds, is the first manuscript about the genetic patterns we're finding among Boulder County chickadees. These samples were all collected through the Boulder Chickadee Study, a field study established by Kathryn during her time as a PhD student at Cu Boulder, that has been running for 7 years.

The main findings of the paper are summarized in the graphical abstract!

Congrats everyone!

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AOS 2025 - St. Louis

Scott Anthony Taylor — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 19:04:39 +0000

AOS 2025 - St. Louis Scott Anthony Taylor Mon, 08/18/2025 - 13:04

Several members of the lab attended the 2025 AOS meeting in St. Louis. Always an excellent meeting, it was great to catch up with colleagues and see the latest and greats in ornithological research.

Congrats to Maria for her early career award (and excellent plenary talk!) as well as Georgy, Sara, and Will for their excellent talks. Scott spoke about Jay's recent paper on potential caterpillar mimicry by white-necked jacobin chicks to a packed room and Sara led the Quiz Bowl, which was enjoyed by all!

Looking forward to AOS 2026 in Amherst!

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Welcome Lucas and Nate!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 02:26:00 +0000

Welcome Lucas and Nate! Scott Anthony Taylor Tue, 08/05/2025 - 20:26

A warm welcome to Lucas Florsheim and Nate Neal - the most recent PhD students to join the Taylor Lab!

Lucas plans to expand on work investigating hybridization between black-capped and mountains chickadees using broader geographic sampling, temporal sampling using museum specimens, and transcriptomics.

Nate, who is co-advised with Dr. Jingchun Li, will explore the genetic basis of mantle lure polymorphism in the freshwater mussel Lampsilis fasciola.

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Olivia, Kathryn, and Carrie's work on chickadee song is featured in Living Bird magazine!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 16:11:41 +0000

Olivia, Kathryn, and Carrie's work on chickadee song is featured in Living Bird magazine! Scott Anthony Taylor Tue, 07/22/2025 - 10:11

A recent article in Living Bird magazine featured Olivia Taylor's honors thesis work (published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology) that was a collaboration between Olivia, Kathryn, and Carrie Branch.

So awesome to see a published undergraduate honors thesis form the lab grace the pages of Living Bird! The article included a lovely descriptive graphic of some of our findings from the Boulder Chickadee Study!

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The 2025 field season has flown by!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 14:49:18 +0000

The 2025 field season has flown by! Scott Anthony Taylor Mon, 07/07/2025 - 08:49

The 2025 summer field season has flown by with the last chickadee nests at the Mountain Research Station of the season scheduled to be banded on July 12. Folks have been busy collecting data for their individual projects along with our annual Boulder Chickadee Study data. Check out updates from the field team below!

Sam: since discovering the legs growths I'm studying are actually caused by scaly leg mites and not avian pox virus, I've been doing a lot of reading. I've also spending plenty of time in the field checking boxes, learning how to band, and taking samples!

Jenna: the field season at the MRS is going great so far, with 27 active nests and 4 hatched Mountain Chickadee nests. Nestling and adult banding is set to start this week.

Sara: the 2025 field season is off to a strong start! I’ve been busy helping with adult banding, nest box checks, and mite sampling, while also helping train the newest members of the Boulder Chickadee Study team.

Eva: this season, I’ve been working in the field doing observational studies to compare black-capped and mountain chickadees in the Boulder area as they feed and care for their young. Tracking the behaviors of these birds across a wide range of elevations has been fascinating, and I look forward to transforming the patterns I find into an honors thesis in the coming semesters!

Nate: this field season I have been collecting data about how long different mountain and black-capped chickadee females are spending incubating their eggs using temperature loggers placed in the nest. I have also been collecting those nests when the nestlings leave, as well as helping out other people with their own projects within the Boulder Chickadee Study.

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Sam, Nate, Eva, and the lab are awarded UROP funding!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Wed, 14 May 2025 00:13:26 +0000

Sam, Nate, Eva, and the lab are awarded UROP funding! Scott Anthony Taylor Tue, 05/13/2025 - 18:13

Congrats to Sam, Nate, and Eva for receiving individual UROP awards to support their summer research! All three are collecting data for their honors thesis projects. Sam will be studying pox virus in our local chickadee populations, Nate will be study incubation patterns in chickadees, and Eva will be studying variation in parental provisioning behavior. We're excited to see what they all find!

The lab also received UROP funding that will be used to continue the Boulder Chickadee Study.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz and senior vice chancellor for research and innovation Massimo Ruzzene visit the MRS with Scott and Nancy Emery!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Wed, 07 May 2025 15:41:16 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz and senior vice chancellor for research and innovation Massimo Ruzzene visit the MRS with Scott and Nancy Emery! Scott Anthony Taylor Wed, 05/07/2025 - 09:41

Scott and Nancy Emery (PI of the Niwot Ridge LTER) recently took �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz and senior vice chancellor for research and innovation Massimo Ruzzene on a tour of the Mountain Research Station and Niwot Ridge. Thanks to Sammy Yevak, the lead Niwot Ridge LTER water technician, the group made it up to the tundra lab for a relatively warm and windless spring tour of Niwot Ridge!

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Jay publishes in Ecology on potential caterpillar mimicry by hummingbird chicks!

Scott Anthony Taylor — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:35:37 +0000

Jay publishes in Ecology on potential caterpillar mimicry by hummingbird chicks! Scott Anthony Taylor Tue, 03/18/2025 - 15:35

Congrats to Jay (and Scott, Michael Castaño-Diaz, Sebastian Gallan-Giraldo, Joseph See!) for publishing a recent paper in Ecology - The Scientific Naturalist that describes possible caterpillar mimicry by white-necked jacobin chicks! Jay and Scott made these observations when Scott was visiting Panama during his sabbatical last year. Be sure to check out the supplemental videos to see the twitching behavior described in the paper!

Quirks and Quarks interview!

Coverage of the paper in Science!

The �鶹��Ѱ��Press Release is here

STRI press release is here

Panamá América

Youtube video about the paper!