Author Archives: Kevin

The Burns lab was well represented at the recent American Ornithological Society meetings, which were held this year at Michigan State University this year. Five past and present Burns lab members were in attendance. Erik received an AOS travel award … Continue reading →

Burns lab members past and present will be well represented at this week’s upcoming American Ornithological Society Meeting in East Lansing, Michigan. Here is a list of presentations by both former and current Burns lab members (in bold): Thursday,  August 3rd; 1:45 … Continue reading →

The AOS checklist supplement for 2017 has recently been published. The paper can be downloaded here and the comments of committee members can be found here. This paper is is the result of work by the AOS Classification Committee, of … Continue reading →

The Burns lab recently received a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study two closely related hummingbirds, the Rufous and the Allen’s Hummingbirds. The grant was awarded in collaboration with Chris Clark and Alan Brelsford, both at the … Continue reading →

Rosalyn Price-Waldman, a Burns lab MS student, was recently awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. These awards provide three years of support for graduate education and are given to annually to outstanding students who are pursuing graduate degrees in … Continue reading →

Congratulations to Erik Funk who successfully defended his MS thesis. His research involved using indices of phylogenetic diversity for conservation planning, focusing on tanagers and their relatives in a large clade known as Emberizoidea (9-primaried oscines). Erik will begin working … Continue reading →

Two papers were published recently on tanagers in the journal Evolution. Both papers originated form data sets collected by Burns lab MS students. In Allison Shultz’s paper, she presents her massive data set on plumage color of tanagers for the … Continue reading →

Congrats to Burns lab MS student Amelia Demery who was recently awarded a Sally Casanova Pre-doctoral Scholarship. These scholarships are awarded by the California State University Chancellor’s office to help students prepare to succeed in a future doctoral programs. Amelia … Continue reading →

The Burns lab welcomes new MS student Rosalyn Price-Waldman. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology (with honors) from Brown University. At Brown, Rosalyn’s undergraduate thesis focused on phylogenetics and comparative wing morphology in bats. For her MS thesis, … Continue reading →

There has been lots of good news for the Burns lab over the past several months. Amelia Demery received funding from the AOU and the American Museum of Natural History to support her project on tanager morphological diversification. She spent … Continue reading →