Taylor
When Jay Falk and Scott Taylor first saw the white-necked Jacobin hummingbird chick in Panama’s dense rainforest, the bird biologists didn’t know what they were looking at. They later realized that it was potentially mimicking a poisonous caterpillar to avoid getting eaten.
The Mountain Research Station will host seven summer field courses in ecology, genetics and art. Registration for these college-level courses opens on Monday, March 10. Spots fill up quickly, so be sure to start the process right away for the best chance of attending.
INSTAAR Fellow and EBIO Associate Professor Scott Taylor is just one of three faculty members to win an award for Excellence in Leadership & Service from the ÌÇÐÄVlogÆƽâ°æ Faculty Assembly. The award includes a monetary prize and an awards ceremony event on April 2nd. Congratulations!
Mountain chickadees in ÌÇÐÄVlogÆƽâ°æ have evolved a different tune to avoid getting mixed up with their black-capped cousins. The results provide real-time evidence for one of Charles Darwin’s famous theories and shed light on how pressure from human activity can impact wildlife’s evolution. The study was led by members of Scott Taylor's Lab.
Why do black-capped chickadees mate with mountain chickadees? And how does the sharp memory of these songbirds serve them over winter? Listen to a 25-minute KGNU science show, with Scott Taylor and host Susan Moran.
The American Ornithological Society announced that the hoary redpoll finch, a small, plump bird commonly found in the Arctic, will be reclassified as the same species as the common redpoll finch, a smaller bird found in similar habitats. This announcement came as a direct result of a 2021 study led by the Taylor Lab which found that, despite their different looks, very few genetic differences exist between the two types of birds.
The common mountain bird has an excellent memory for the right perch for free seeds, and has the flexibility to handle climate change. New research from the University of Colorado and colleagues has tightened a claw around the sets of genes that make mountain chickadees some of the most remarkable return-navigators in nature.
A multi-university team of researchers, including four members of CU ÌÇÐÄVlogÆƽâ°æ's Taylor Lab, have identified nearly a hundred genes associated with the birds’ spatial memory, or ability to recall the locations of objects. Their paper, published in the journal Current Biology, also suggests a potential trade-off may exist between having a solid long-term memory and being able to quickly ditch old memories to form new ones.
CU ÌÇÐÄVlogÆƽâ°æ’s Mountain Research Station is offering six field courses this summer, giving students the opportunity to study a wide range of disciplines in nature
Scott Taylor (INSTAAR Fellow, EBIO Associate Professor, MRS Director) gave a short TED-style talk at the ÌÇÐÄVlogÆƽâ°æ Dairy Arts Center on October 18, 2023 as part of the 2023 Faculty Fellows program for CU ÌÇÐÄVlogÆƽâ°æ's Research & Innovation Office (RIO). In his talk, Scott tells the story of his personal journey to a deeper understanding of his work as a scientist and his own place in the world.