And we found that classical ecological theory (Elton's pyramid) predicts very well the trajectory of effective population sizes since the radiations unfolded - predators de- and herbivores increasing in population size - and thus the ecology of an evolved (instead of assembled) community.
We found that the coalescence patterns support a very recent origin of the Lake Victoria radiation <16,700 years when the lake dried out, and also a very recent origin of the Lakes Edward/Kivu and Lake Albert radiations.
Today, I had the privilege to handle some of the most iconic but sadly extinct birds at the Natural History Museum Basel with Ferran Sayol / U Barcelona for his research. How beautiful they are and what a tragedy that we will never be able to experience them in the wild again 😥
I am extremely grateful for all these contributions to our project and the support and enthusiasm of our collaborators. And I am very much looking forward to see the first results coming from our team! 6/
Field work continued in Switzerland and continues simultaneously in the US, UK, France, Portugal, Norway, Croatia, Romania and even Ukraine by our many collaborators. 4/
…including our colleague and gull „veteran“ researcher Magdalena Zagalska-Neubauer who I first met 20 years ago during a super inspiring International Gull Meeting in Poland when I was a fresh highschool graduate and gull fan. 3/
Melody and I have already kicked off the project with 3 weeks of field work in Poland in a large collaboration with many Polish gull researchers, ringers and enthusiasts… 2/
The
#Laromics team is complete! From right to left: Melody Wu (PhD), Elisa Ramos (Postdoc) and I. Looking forward to get our
#seagull #genomics project rolling with my brilliant colleagues! 1/
Looking forward to give a talk today @NHMOslo_Science at 14:00 in the Tangled Bank seminar and to meet with many scientists and learn about their awesome research there and @CEESUiO!
So, now that my first toot is out of the way... time for my mastodon
#introduction: Hi! I am an evolutionary biologist and
#curator of vertebrates at the Natural History Museum Basel interested in
#speciation and
#adaptation #genomics, working (previously) with
#stickleback and
#cichlids and (as of now) with awesome
#gulls.
