Lab News
Heather is awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Congratulations to Heather who has received the CU Graduate School's Dissertation Completion Fellowship! This competitive fellowship is awarded to candidates with a record of high-quality and productive science and with excellent research proposals, and gives PhD candidates the opportunity to focus on the last stages of their dissertation by relieving teaching duties. Way to go Heather!
Congratulations to Heather who has received the CU Graduate School's Dissertation Completion Fellowship! This competitive fellowship is awarded to candidates with a record of high-quality and productive science and with excellent research proposals, and gives PhD candidates the opportunity to focus on the last stages of their dissertation by relieving teaching duties. Way to go Heather!
Salomé and Julia defend their Honors Theses
Huge congratulations to Julia and Salomé, who have spent the last year crafting incredible honors theses. From start to finish they have designed their projects, collected data, analyzed data, written papers and presented their work with incredible perseverance, creating brand new science. Julia's thesis studied the role of urbanization and temperature on nestling plumage coloration, and Salomé's thesis tested how adult body size varied with elevation and latitude across subspecies (both in Barn Swallows, of course).
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Huge congratulations to Julia and Salomé, who have spent the last year crafting incredible honors theses. From start to finish they have designed their projects, collected data, analyzed data, written papers and presented their work with incredible perseverance, creating brand new science. Julia's thesis studied the role of urbanization and temperature on nestling plumage coloration, and Salomé's thesis tested how adult body size varied with elevation and latitude across subspecies (both in Barn Swallows, of course).
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New papers out led by Zach, Heather, and Drew
Kicking 2025 (and late 2024) off with some amazing new work out from the Safran Lab!
Work led by Zach found that faster-growing nestling Barn Swallows are able to mount a stronger stress response than slower-growing nestlings, indicating that these nestlings may acquire greater resources (and thereby avoid a resource allocation tradeoff). Parental care also plays a role in modifying these effects. Read the paper in The American Naturalist.
Work led by Heather connects female Barn Swallow's space use to their clutches paternity following a nest failure--females that spent more time off-nest had higher extrapair paternity (that is, males other than their social mate sired their offspring) in their replacement clutches. There is very little known about female movements during their fertile period, and Heather used GPS trackers on little backpacks to quantify females' space use. Read the paper in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
Work led by Drew investigates the genomic architecture and history of selection on sexual traits (ventral color and tail streamer length) of three Barn Swallow subspecies that hybridize in Asia. The team found that loci underlying these traits have undergone divergent selection in allopatry. that these loci act as barriers to gene flow, and that there is high linkage disequilibrium among the loci at contact zones. Read the paper in Science.
Kicking 2025 (and late 2024) off with some amazing new work out from the Safran Lab!
Work led by Zach found that faster-growing nestling Barn Swallows are able to mount a stronger stress response than slower-growing nestlings, indicating that these nestlings may acquire greater resources (and thereby avoid a resource allocation tradeoff). Parental care also plays a role in modifying these effects. Read the paper in The American Naturalist.
Work led by Heather connects female Barn Swallow's space use to their clutches paternity following a nest failure--females that spent more time off-nest had higher extrapair paternity (that is, males other than their social mate sired their offspring) in their replacement clutches. There is very little known about female movements during their fertile period, and Heather used GPS trackers on little backpacks to quantify females' space use. Read the paper in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
Work led by Drew investigates the genomic architecture and history of selection on sexual traits (ventral color and tail streamer length) of three Barn Swallow subspecies that hybridize in Asia. The team found that loci underlying these traits have undergone divergent selection in allopatry. that these loci act as barriers to gene flow, and that there is high linkage disequilibrium among the loci at contact zones. Read the paper in Science.
Heather wins People's Choice Award for 3 Minute Thesis
Heather's presentation about her doctoral work was the audience favorite of CU Boulder's 3MT competition! The 3MT competition is a very challenging exercise in scientific communication: it requires explaining complex and nuanced science to a non-technical audience in an engaging way, with limited time and visuals. Way to go Heather!
Heather's presentation about her doctoral work was the audience favorite of CU Boulder's 3MT competition! The 3MT competition is a very challenging exercise in scientific communication: it requires explaining complex and nuanced science to a non-technical audience in an engaging way, with limited time and visuals. Way to go Heather!
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Heather is a 3 Minute Thesis finalist for CU Boulder
Heather very succinctly WOWED the judges of CU Boulder's 3-Minute Thesis competition and has advanced to the University's final round! Her talk describes the three main elements of her doctoral work--understanding how the neighborhood, social environment, and females' own traits and movements impact mate choice--to a non-expert audience, using only 1 (beautiful) slide. See the final round Thursday, February 13, 2025, from 4–6 p.m. in the UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom. Just in time for Valentine's Day, which the birds probably don't celebrate as they are busy wintering in Central and South America and presumably avoiding romance until they get through migration.
Heather very succinctly WOWED the judges of CU Boulder's 3-Minute Thesis competition and has advanced to the University's final round! Her talk describes the three main elements of her doctoral work--understanding how the neighborhood, social environment, and females' own traits and movements impact mate choice--to a non-expert audience, using only 1 (beautiful) slide. See the final round Thursday, February 13, 2025, from 4–6 p.m. in the UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom. Just in time for Valentine's Day, which the birds probably don't celebrate as they are busy wintering in Central and South America and presumably avoiding romance until they get through migration.
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Becca and Heather are Women Who Make a Difference
Both Becca and Heather were honored this month as CU Boulder's 2024 Women who Make a Difference. This award recognizes women who are making positive impacts in the lives of CU community members. It was a lovely ceremony, and no SafLab members were caught openly crying while the very touching nomination letters were read. They are each pictured with their respective nominators here. |
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Salomé WINS Biodiversity logo design contest!
Cool Boulder has selected Salomé's logo as the winner of their logo contest for International Day of Biodiversity! Check out her bio and read more about the contest here. There's a lot to love about this logo; I find it remarkable that the mountains are still unmistake-ably the flatirons in such a clean, sparse style. I also love that all the wildlife and people all appear to be looking intently at the same point. Congrats Salomé!
Cool Boulder has selected Salomé's logo as the winner of their logo contest for International Day of Biodiversity! Check out her bio and read more about the contest here. There's a lot to love about this logo; I find it remarkable that the mountains are still unmistake-ably the flatirons in such a clean, sparse style. I also love that all the wildlife and people all appear to be looking intently at the same point. Congrats Salomé!
SafLab at the AOS Conference
Becca, Sara, Gray, Heather, Gina, and SafLab alumn Iris attended the 2024 meeting of the American Ornithological Society in Estes Park, CO. With over 1000 attendees this was AOS's biggest meeting to date. We had a great time catching up on all the new research in bird world, including some truly inspiring plenary talks. Some highlights of the trip include:
Becca, Sara, Gray, Heather, Gina, and SafLab alumn Iris attended the 2024 meeting of the American Ornithological Society in Estes Park, CO. With over 1000 attendees this was AOS's biggest meeting to date. We had a great time catching up on all the new research in bird world, including some truly inspiring plenary talks. Some highlights of the trip include:
- Sara Garcia presented their work on Barn Swallows along Urban-Rural Gradients, knocking it out of the park at their first-ever talk at a science conference
- Heather Kenny-Duddela's talk on how female plumage and space use affect extra pair mating in Barn Swallows was awarded the Mark E. Hauber Award for best presentation on animal behavior
- Chilling at the Live-Laugh-Love Cabin with the Uy lab, which provided a lot of peer networking, mentorship, yummy group meals, some crazy stories and a thousand stupid jokes
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SafLab at the GREEBs Conference
Heather and Salomé presented at the 2024 meeting of the Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists this September! This is a very cool regional meeting that is often hosted at CU's own Mountain Research Station. Salomé presented a poster and Heather gave an oral presentation.
Heather and Salomé presented at the 2024 meeting of the Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists this September! This is a very cool regional meeting that is often hosted at CU's own Mountain Research Station. Salomé presented a poster and Heather gave an oral presentation.
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Salomé is finalist in Biodiverse Boulder design contest!
We in the lab know of Salomé Carrasco's incredible talent for
illustration, and are so proud that her design was chosen as a finalist
for Cool Boulder's celebration of International Day for Biodiversity.
The final winner is yet to be announced but we know who we
voted for : ) Cool Boulder is a local climate action partnership, you
can read more about their organization here. Salomé's design is
the only finalist to feature a Barn Swallow, making it inherently
the best.
We in the lab know of Salomé Carrasco's incredible talent for
illustration, and are so proud that her design was chosen as a finalist
for Cool Boulder's celebration of International Day for Biodiversity.
The final winner is yet to be announced but we know who we
voted for : ) Cool Boulder is a local climate action partnership, you
can read more about their organization here. Salomé's design is
the only finalist to feature a Barn Swallow, making it inherently
the best.
Natalie's cool GIS barn swallow story map!
Natalie made this cool story map on the Barn Swallow breeding range in California for their GIS final project. Check it out here:
Natalie made this cool story map on the Barn Swallow breeding range in California for their GIS final project. Check it out here:
Grace draws a visual abstract of her project at UROP
Sidewalk Symposium
Grace's summer fieldwork included a project studying the relationship between Barn Swallows' pair bond strength and the time to relay eggs. She presented this work at the Sidewalk Symposium on Oct. 17th; you can read more about the Symposium here. Stay tuned for more as Grace develops her Honors Thesis following up on this very cool work!
Sidewalk Symposium
Grace's summer fieldwork included a project studying the relationship between Barn Swallows' pair bond strength and the time to relay eggs. She presented this work at the Sidewalk Symposium on Oct. 17th; you can read more about the Symposium here. Stay tuned for more as Grace develops her Honors Thesis following up on this very cool work!
