Author Archives: Kevin

The Burns lab welcomes two new graduate students this fall. Erik Funk is a new MS student and earned a BS in Environmental Science from SDSU. Erik was actually an undergrad researcher in the Burns lab and was also engaged … Continue reading →

Several Burns lab students past and present attended the recent bird meetings (AOU/COS/SCO) in Estes Park, Colorado. Shannon Walsh received a student presentation award for her talk on his MS thesis research on evolutionary divergence of Spotted Towhees on California’s … Continue reading →

Lots of Burns lab members past and present will be represented at the upcoming joint meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union and Cooper Ornithological Society in Estes Park, Colorado. Here is a full list of presentations authored or co-authored by … Continue reading →

Mason, N. A., Shultz, A. J., and K. J. Burns. 2014. Elaborate visual and acoustic signals evolve independently in a large, phenotypically diverse radiation of songbirds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences 281 1788 20140967.  pdf We recently … Continue reading →

Congratulations to Luke Klicka who successfully defended his MS thesis on the conservation genetics of the Bell’s Vireo. Luke studied the phylogeography of the Bell’s Vireo across its range using a combination of traditional and next generation sequencing approaches. His … Continue reading →

Shannon Walsh, MS student in the Burns lab, just learned she has received funding from the Ralph Schreiber Fund of the Los Angeles Audubon Society to help fund her project. Shannon is working on Spotted Towhees on the Channel Islands. … Continue reading →

We recently published a multilocus, species-level tree for tanagers in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. This paper represent the culmination of many years of work and will appear in the June issue, although it is currently available online in its final … Continue reading →

Last Saturday was the start of the San Diego Science Festival which coincided with the SDSU Open House. At part of these events, we showed off some of the collections of the SDSU Museum of Biodiversity. Birds were represented as … Continue reading →

Lots of good news recently for Burns lab students: Burns lab MS student Luke Klicka has been accepted into the PhD program at the University of Kansas. Also, Allan Cabrero was awarded a prestigious summer internship at the Smithsonian and … Continue reading →

Mason, N. A. and K. J. Burns. 2013. Molecular phylogenetics of the Neotropical Seedeaters and Seed-finches (Sporophila, Oryzoborus, Dolospingus). Ornitología Neotropical 24: 139-155. pdf We recently published a paper in Ornitología Neotropical reporting on the phylogeny of seedeaters. Seedeaters are … Continue reading →