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27th International Ornithological Congress (1 Viewer)

Melanie

Well-known member
Germany
The 27th IOC will be held in Toronto, Canada from 19 August until 26 August 2018. The president is Lucia Severinghaus.

There are several notable speakers, including Robert C. Fleischer, world authority on avian malaria, Jenny Gill, former president of the BOU, and Henrik Mouritsen, a world authority on the navigation of birds.

Here is the list of the IOC symposia

http://www.iocongress2018.com/symposia-descriptions

and here is the official website

http://www.iocongress2018.com/welcome
 
Oh, well there's a bit of bad planning on behalf of the organisers... This overlaps with the joint ESEB conference in Montpellier
 
Oh, well there's a bit of bad planning on behalf of the organisers... This overlaps with the joint ESEB conference in Montpellier

But your mind should be made up -- you have more potential lifers in Vancouver than Montpellier. Especially if you go on the post-Congress tour to Ecuador or Colombia!
 
Another comment would be that there are two sets of organizers to blame, they should both have worked to avoid any overlap

Niels
 
The Full Abstract schedule is now available http://ow.ly/H4m930l0U7J

e.g.

Frank Gill & Les Christidis. World bird classifications.

Abstract:
The taxonomy of world birds has entered a new era of dynamic changes. The changes are driven by new molecular technologies for evaluating relationships and by new communication technologies for sharing information. Applications in conservation, ecotourism, and international development all call increasingly for improved alignment of global lists and a more unified classification of birds. By focusing on the stakeholders and end users who would benefit from unification of world bird lists the Round Table discussion will explore ways to work together to get a better result for all. Managers of the primary world bird lists will first lay the foundation for the Round Table by speaking briefly about their missions and progress to date. Then Round Table attendees will discuss the challenges and opportunities for achieving taxonomic consensus. Next steps include agreements on first principles, and priorities as well as on our end game goals. The Round Table will conclude with a proposed timetable for achieving those goals. Participants Participants include the following editors of the primary world bird checklists and their advisors: Les Christidis, Southern Cross University; Howard & Moore Complete Checklist Nigel Collar, Bird Life International; Complete bird checklist David Donsker, Nuttall Ornithological Club; IOC World Bird List Frank Gill, Academy of Natural Sciences; IOC World Bird List Josep del Hoyo, Lynx Editions; HBW Alive Marshall Iliff , Cornell Lab of Ornithology; eBird Denis LePage, Bird Studies Canada; AvibaseThomas Schulenberg, Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Clements Checklist

Carole Griffiths & Emmanuel Alberto. Phylogeny of the Accipitridae.

Abstract:
The family Accipitridae contains about 225 species, one of the five or six largest avian families. Within this family, almost all of the species are listed in Cites Appendix 1 and II, so accurate taxonomic information is essential to make informed conservation decisions. The family was traditionally divided into about eight subfamilies or tribes. Current studies (Lerner and Mindell, 2005; Griffiths et al, 2007; Barrowclough et al., 2012; Jiang et al., 2015) have indicated that these subfamilies are not monophyletic and several have proposed new ideas for subfamily classification. However, there is a lack of consensus among these studies. In addition, although some genera have been reclassified, there are questions about the monophyly of others. We analyzed 184 species, the most comprehensive sampling so far, using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses, to attempt to resolve subfamily composition and generic limits. Our analysis indicated increased support for the basal nodes within the family, and greater support for several of the proposed sub-families. Additionally, our analysis indicated both paraphyly and polyphyly of the genus Accipiter. This is not new but we included a more comprehensive sampling of species within the genus and of outgroup species to lend more support to this hypothesis. Details about the phylogeny and a new taxonomy will be discussed.
 
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Characterizing the Northwestern Crow-American Crow hybrid zone using genetic data from 150 years of museum specimens
Authors:
David L. Slager1, 2, Kevin L. Epperly1, 2, John Klicka1, 2
1. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA, 2. Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Seattle, WA, USA

Abstract
The Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus) has long been a controversial taxon because it is morphologically and behaviorally indistinguishable from the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) near the poorly defined range boundary in the Pacific Northwest. Using recent museum specimens from across the ranges of both taxa, we found two clades of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes that likely diverged during the Pleistocene, consistent with past isolation in glacial refugia. The geographic distribution of these clades approximates the published ranges of Northwestern and American, and an overlap zone in northwestern Washington and western British Columbia where crow populations contain both haplotype groups is consistent with secondary contact. Using ddRAD SNPs from the nuclear genome, we inferred a phylogeographic pattern consistent with the mitochondrial signal and discovered that all crows in a broad area of western Washington and southwestern British Columbia are hybrids. Thus, these two taxa are conspecific under the biological species concept. Interestingly, the hybrid zone coincides with the most heavily urbanized part of the Pacific Northwest. One published hypothesis is that human land use changes and urbanization since the 19th century have allowed crow populations to expand into new anthropogenic habitat types, reducing assortative mating and increasing the geographic breadth of the overlap zone. We use DNA sequences from 19th century museum specimens to test the hypothesis that the geographic distribution of Northwestern and American Crows has changed during the past 100 to 150 years.
 
The mysterious case of the Carolina Parakeet: comparing patterns of range contraction to hypothesized extinction drivers
Authors:
Kevin R. Burgio1, Colin J. Carlson2, Alexander L. Bond3, Margaret A. Rubega1, Morgan W. Tingley1
1. University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA, 2. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, Annapolis, MD, USA, 3. The Natural History Museum, Bird Group, Department of Life Sciences, Tring, United Kingdom

Abstract *
This year marks the centennial of the demise of the last captive Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), yet why the only parrot endemic to North America north of Mexico, went extinct remains a mystery. We examined the spatio-temporal process of range contraction preceding the extinction of the Carolina Parakeet. Shedding light on the extinction process may help inform conservation of extant parrots, which comprise one of the most at-risk orders of birds. We developed a new model and R package, called spatExtinct, which uses Bayesian extinction date estimators and temporal occurrences to make spatially explicit predictions of extinction dates. We then applied this model to a detailed occurrence dataset of Carolina Parakeets and used Random Forest models to couple our spatial predictions of range loss with historic human population and land-use data. While extinction date models suggest that the species most likely lingered until the 1940s before going truly extinct, the eastern and western subspecies likely went extinct ~30 years apart. Human expansion and associated loss of grassland best predicted range loss for both subspecies, small amounts of settlement acting like leading indicators for disturbance. Conversion of forested land to cropland may have been a more important issue for the eastern subspecies than the western subspecies. This approach not only helps explain why, where, and when this iconic species went extinct, but the model also demonstrates the potential for exploring the drivers of range loss for other extinct or critically endangered species.

www.iocongressabstracts.com/abstract_summary.php?mode=public&abs_id=1464
 
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