Kevin Bennett

A great summary of our recent warbler introgression paper. Check it out!

This is a plague where I live in Virginia, where cardinal is the state bird. I happen to live right off of Cardinal Drive and half the neighborhoods are named after cardinals. Every single cutesy neighborhood sign with a yellow bill. The cardinal on my license plate has a yellow bill...

Cardinal with a yellow bill!!

The best thing about driving through small towns is lots of opportunities for the "two-finger wave."

I'd like to believe that this is the same bird that wintered in DC for six winters in a row until this year. 😥

Evolution's not a tidy family tree. New work from @davetoews.bsky.social in @plosbiology.org found warblers sharing genes for yellow plumage across species lines for millions of yrs. But some, like this Prothonotary Warbler, took their own path to gold. Durham, NC. #PROW #genomics #ornithology

I'm missing 12 orders of the 45 in the eBird/Clement's taxonomy, according to the new BotW phylogeny viewer. Time to go to Africa.

Unbelievably helpful.

I would love to know if super black plumage as a precursor makes it easier or more likely for structural color (like the neon blue crown) to evolve subsequently. I feel like there's a straightforward ancestral state reconstruction type analysis that could answer this.

_Lepidothrix velutina_ photograph courtesy of David Monroy Rengifo (ML298008331).

Super black plumage was identified in birds as part of awesome work by Drs. Dakota McCoy (@reallymccoy.bsky.social), Rick Prum, and others.

Dr. Roberta Canton dug into one clade containing a taxon having super black plumage, _Lepidothrix_ manakins, to show that super black is relatively common...

Anytime a birding spot has a boardwalk you instantly know it will be good. You look on a map of a park and see a boardwalk. Immediate first stop.

@dlnarango.bsky.social?

My read of the proposed House budget is that NSF basically maintains its previous funding level, rather than the massive cuts requested by the White House. Same with USGS. punchbowl.news/wp-content/u...

Pleasantly surprised to discover last week's episode of the ABA podcast discussed our recent warbler hybrid work. Give it a listen! doi.org/10.1080/1559...

Smartphone ownership among 12-year-olds is associated with depression, obesity, and loss of sleep. No smartphones for kids!
doi.org/10.1542/peds...

(And still hoping to make it to Escudo someday)

Really excited to see these results, Ioana!

Photographs of the putative Geothlypis philadelphia × G. trichas hybrid taken at the time of capture.

Latest articles from the WJO - Genetic confirmation of an “uncommon mourningthroat” (Geothlypis philadelphia  ×  G. trichas): A rare but persistent hybrid warbler. #ornithology doi.org/10.1080/1559...

Achieved my career goal of getting a writeup from the Avian Hybrids blog. This one is on the manakin paper I co-led with H.C. Lim last year which comprised a good chunk of my PhD work.

Slate-throated redstart. From Macaulay Library. Photo by Isaias Morataya.

And the reason northern subspecies of slate-throated redstart are red (and central ones are orange) is because of gene flow at BDH1L from Cardellina (red and pink-headed warblers). The southern subspecies are yellow.

Magnolia, yellow, blackburnian, redstart, prairie, vitelline, and Wilson's warbler interbred (order unknown) to pass around the Leiothlypis (orange-crowned, Nashville, etc) form of BCO2, a gene that encodes a carotenoid-cleaving enzyme. Gene flow was probably instrumental in making warblers colorful

I can't take credit for it, sadly. @davetoews.bsky.social can tell us whether this was him, Andrew Wood, or Marcella Baiz. I've been assuming it was Andrew. The work of requesting samples and preparing libraries had just finished when I arrived at Penn State.

Note, we didn't end up getting -every- species. Most that we missed were recent splits. But also, sorry, Leucopeza fans.

Thanks for your advice early on in the tree-building, Brant!

Many thanks to co-authors, labmates, funders, and museums that made this all possible!

Songbirds swap colorful plumage genes across species lines among their evolutionary neighbors Interbreeding across species lines is one way helpful genes can spread into a bird population.

Also, check out Dave's piece in The Conversation about this work. theconversation.com/songbirds-sw...

We think this all adds up to good evidence that gene flow is a common mechanism for the evolution of colorful plumage in warblers. Check out the paper for all the details. And check out our BioProject on NCBI for 500 warbler whole genomes, just released today!
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?...

fd manhattan plots showing introgression of the genes of interest and colored genotype plots showing Cardellina DNA in Myioborus pictus and miniatus at BDH1L. Plus pictus DNA in miniatus at CYP2J19.

Surprise! More gene flow between genera. This time from red Cardellina species (or perhaps their common ancestor) into painted redstart and from painted redstart into slate-throated redstart. The latter is particularly exciting because it appears to be ongoing or at least incomplete.

Pink-headed warbler. From Macaulay Library. Photo by Luke Seitz.

Next, we looked at two other genes important to plumage color: CYP2J19 and BDH1L. These encode enzymes that convert yellow carotenoids to red ketocarotenoids.

Sequencing reads showing one homozygote for the introgression haplotype, one homozygote for the ancestral haplotype, and three heterozygotes.

A red-faced warbler in the hand next to a color standard.

There’s also the issue of red-faced warbler, where only some of our samples showed evidence of introgression. We’re following this up now, so stay tuned.