Congratulations to PhD student Helen Sofaer for an honorable mention in the student awards competition at the 4th North American Ornithological Congress in Veracruz, MX, for her oral presentation: "Why does the length of the nestling period vary between populations of the Orange-crowned Warbler (Vermivora celata)?"

October thru December Assistant Professor Shane Kanatous and Reaserch Associate Linnea Pearson are in Antarctica carrying our research on the molecular regulation and development of diving in Weddell seals. Be sure to keep up with them by checking out the website http://extremephysiology.biology.colostate.edu

Research Scientist Brad Johnson will be traveling through New Mexico this week evaluating the effects of wildfires on cottonwood forests.

Research scientist Brad Johnson gave a talk on wetland functional assessment at the US EPA's annual monitoring and assessment workshop in Denver.

Assistant Professor Lisa Angeloni presented a seminar on October 19th to the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University on sex allocation in hermaphroditic animals

Assistant Professor Cameron Ghalambor presented a talk on September 22nd, at the 31st annual meeting of Western Field Ornithologists in Boulder, CO, entitled "Avian parental care under the risk of nest predation: General patterns and exceptions"

Assistant Professor Cameron Ghalambor and graduate students Shelley Bayard de Volo, Reesa Conrey, Helen Sofaer, Julian Torres-Dowdall, and Jongmin Yoon travelled to Veracruz, Mexico for the 4th North American Ornithological Congress, October 3-7th.

Associate Professor LeRoy Poff is traveling to Northampton, Massachusetts, on October 19 for a 1-day workshop on stream and river conservation planning for the Connecticut River Basin, sponsored by The Nature Conservancy. He will then go to the University of South Carolina (Columbia) to make a invited presentation on stream and river responses to human alterations in a 2-day symposium entitled "The Human Role in Changing the Fluvial Geomorphology of the Earth."

Professor Don Mykles traveled to Washington, DC Oct. 23-25 to serve on a grant review panel for the National Science Foundation.

Professor Mike Antolin served on the NSF Evolutionary and Population Ecology grants review panel in Washington, DC, October 11-13.

Recent Publications from Assistant Professor Shane B Kanatous: Watson RR, Kanatous SB, Cowan DF, Wen JW, Han VC, Davis RW. Volume density and distribution of mitochondria in harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) skeletal muscle. J Comp Physiol [B]. 2006 Aug 22 [Epub ahead of print]; Mammen PP, Shelton JM, Ye Q, Kanatous SB, McGrath AJ, Richardson JA, Garry DJ. Cytoglobin is a stress-responsive hemoprotein that is expressed in the developing and adult brain. J Histochem Cytochem. 2006 Aug 9; [Epub ahead of print], and Kanatous SB, Garry DJ. Gene deletional strategies reveal novel physiological roles for myoglobin in striated muscle. Respir Physiol Neurobiol. 2006 Apr 28;151(2-3):151-8. Epub 2006 Jan 18. Review.

Former PhD student Deb Finn is lead author on a paper entitled "Spatial population genetic structure and limited dispersal in a Rocky Mountain alpine stream insect," published in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology (15:3553-3566). Her PhD advisor, Associate Professor LeRoy Poff, is a co-author.

Former PhD student Aaron Hoffman is lead author on a paper entitled "Flow velocity and benthic structure shape aquatic herbivore movement," published in the latest issue of Oikos (115:358-368). Co-authors include former PhD student Julian Olden, former MS student Jeremy Monroe, former post-doc Todd Wellnitz, and Aaron's co-advisors, Associate Professor LeRoy Poff and Professor Emeritus John Wiens.

A paper by former graduate student Sung Gu Lee and Prof. Don Mykles was published in Integrative and Comparative Biology: "Proteomics and signal transduction in the crustacean molting gland."

Eisen, R.J., S.W. Bearden, A.P. Wilder, J.A. Montenieri, M.F. Antolin, and K.L. Gage. 2006. Early-phase transmission of Yersinia pestis by unblocked fleas as a mechanism explaining rapidly spreading plague epizootics. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 103: 15380-15385. (This work was in collaboration with the CDC laboratory here in Fort Collins: Becky Eisen is a former post-doc in the department, Aryn Wilder is a Ph.D. student, and Ken Gage is at the CDC and affiliate faculty in Biology.)

Mark Simmons has been appointed as an associate editor of Systematic Botany.