The Daily Bulletin Archive

Please join the Biology Department and the Great Lakes Center today, November 4, for the seminar "Selection on Pigmentation Genes Leads to Rapid Phenotypic Evolution in a Finch Radiation," presented by Leo Campagna, research associate with the Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, from 3:00 to 3:50 p.m. in Technology Building 160. All students, staff, and faculty are welcome.

Abstract
Recent and rapid speciation events are suitable for associating phenotypes with their causal genotypes. I will talk about the rapid radiation of nine sympatric bird species known as capuchino seedeaters (genus Sporophila), which are differentiated in sexually selected characters of male plumage and song. We obtained whole genome sequences from a phenotypically diverse set of species to search for differentiated genomic regions and found many divergent areas enriched for genes involved in the melanogenesis pathway.