Couple new papers from the lab!

Couple fun projects have just been published from our lab. As always, pubs represent hard hard work, so I am especially thankful to all the authors who put in the time and effort. #ProudPI

The first is a paper led by Fabio de Sá published in Ecology and Evolution (a paper from his PhD thesis). Two species of Cycloramphus come together in the Atlantic Coastal Forest of Brazil and there are some interesting dynamics going on in terms of introgression and mitonuclear discordance. [link]

The second paper was a lab project, led by Céline Carneiro. We examine the global distribution of genomic resources for reptile and amphibian conservation. We find that i) resources exist, but are very skewed globally and areas of highest biodiversity are coldspots for genomic resources ii) most genomic resources provide information on spatial variation in population diversity, far fewer address functional variation and implications for species adaptive potential in the face of global change iii) Many of the coldspots show significant bias in authorship, with papers on taxa from the global south having fewer local authors compared to studies on taxa from the global north. A truly collaborative conservation genomics field will need improved resource sharing and capacity building in the Global South. [link]

The Rite of Spring

Ambystoma maculatum on his way to Bull Pasture Pond on the Cornell campus. Photo: C. Zobek

Maybe you already knew this, but our winters are looong, so it makes it even more special to witness the salamander migration to the breeding ponds. This is the real sign that winter has lost its grip on Ithaca!

Our Herpetology class has been waiting for this for weeks! And sure enough… it happens on the Friday before Spring Break when most students have left campus. Tonight Jordan, Nicole, and KZ took the few Herpetology students and Cornell Herp Society members that are still on campus to Bull Pasture Pond. We saw a bunch of Ambystoma jeffersonianum and A. maculatum, learned about sexual interference by spermatophore capping in spotted salamanders, and instagrammed the hell out of the salamanders making their way to the pond. It’s our own special herpetology ritual 🙂