Lab News

Current   Past 

12/31/2018 Austin Green's camera trap research on Utah's mammals was a Salt Lake Tribune cover story! Thanks to our amazing volunteers, we have some great photos & data.

12/27/2018 I am accepting applications from highly motivated Ph.D. students interested in joining my lab at the University of Utah Department of Biology. Our application deadline is January 3, 2019. Details are here and here

09/07/2018 Monte Neate-Clegg's first paper, "Elevational changes in the avian community of a Mesoamerican cloud forest park", was published in Biotropica. Read the news story!

8/13/2018 Congratulations to our lab member Ethan Frehner for defendings his M.Sc. thesis "Seasonal Variation of Scavenger Activity in the Great Basin Desert"!

7/9/2018 Our new paper shows that insectivorous birds eat half a billion ton of insects per year, comparable to the 450 million tons of meat and fish people eat annually.

3/9/2018 JJ Horns' new paper shows that citizen science birding data is nearly as good as U.S. government surveys in detecting bird population trends.

08/1/2017 Congratulations to our lab alumnus Dr. Mark Chynoweth for starting his tenure-track assistant professorship in wildlife ecology and management at Utah State University

06/26/2017 Congratulations to our lab member Evan Buechley for his Hawkwatch International postdoc on the conservation ecology of raptors in the Horn of Africa.

05/04/2017 Congratulations to our lab members Evan Buechley and Mark William Chynoweth for getting their Ph.D.s after doing stellar research under difficult field conditions!

04/25/2017 Watch our Turkey bear conservation ecology work on BBC's Turkey documentary.

3/31/2017 Our "badger buries cow" paper and video go viral with over 10 million views and is featured in Science, National Geographic, New York Times, NPR, USA Today, and Newsweek.

10/26/2016 With geolocators, we tracked 27 gram great reed warblers' amazing intercontinental 11,000 km yearly cycle.

09/06/2016 We announce our new book "Why Birds Matter" at the World Conservation Congress.

8/24/2016 Our new UCP book "Why Birds Matter: Avian Ecological Function and Ecosystem Services" is now on Amazon.

7/26/2016 Our bird population biology research in Red Butte Canyon is on Utah Public Radio.

7/11/2016 Our latest article on vultures made the cover of Current Biology.

6/27/2016 We discovered world's first migratory brown bears in eastern Turkey. Read paper here.

6/6/2016 Our global overview of avian scavengers is the Editor's Choice for June, one of the most read papers and is featured in the Atlantic.

5/5/2016 Our new paper analyzing why some avian scavengers face extinction while others are booming is in the news.

05/03/2016 - Sekercioglu's interview on the award-winning songbird documentary "The Messenger" that features our lab's research.

4/14/2016 Şekercioğlu Q&A in Park City Film series, after a 6:30 PM free screening of “The Messenger,” a documentary about the world’s dwindling songbirds that also features our lab's research.

3/31/2016 Our collaborator Prof. Paul Beier of NAU is this week's department seminar speaker.

10/01/2015 Our paper on the importance of tropical riparian corridors for seed-dispersing forest birds in a fragmented landscape is out. You can download it here.

08/01/2015 The Editors of Biological Conservation selected our article on the world's most bird-friendly coffee as their must-read choice for their August issue. The article is free to download here.

03/20/2015 Robert College Quarterly recognizes Dr. Sekercioglu as the youngest recipient of Science Award.

08/03/2014 Our Current Biology paper on the effects of selective logging on tropical biodiversity is in the news.

06/03/2014 Our paper and Sekercioglu's photos have been chosen for the cover of Ecology Letters.

05/02/2014 Sekercioglu receives the University of Utah's Inaugural Citizen Science Award.

04/28/2014 A good story about our new Ecology Letters paper on, "What makes birds of a feather flock together?"

04/10/2014 We received one of four inaugural Foundation Segré-Whitley Fund partnership grants for our research on Landscape Conservation of Large Carnivores in Turkey.

02/20/2014 We are hosting the world-renowned conservation biologist Prof. Stuart Pimm who is giving the Department of Biology Seminar on Extinctions today.

01/07/2014 Our new paper is a global analysis of the effects of forest fragmentation on the world's birds.

12/03/2013 Sekercioglu was invited to an hour-long private meeting with Turkey's President Abdullah Gul to discuss his conservation and ecological research efforts in Turkey.

11/15/13 Our lab's bird conservation ecology research is in Audubon.

10/1/13 Our lab's work on effects of climate change on birds is featured in Audubon magazine

9/4/13 Our lab's bird conservation work in Turkey is featured in Audubon magazine

08/20/2013 Our research on using citizen science data to study the effects of climatic change on birds is in New York Times

08/02/2013 Sekercioglu's efforts to save eastern Turkey's richest wetland for birds is in Science. Read Listen

07/29/2013 Evan Buechley and Cagan Sekercioglu co-author a chapter on endangered species in Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia.

7/13/2013 New paper out in PLoS One: Using citizen science data to model the distribution of common songbirds of Turkey under different global climatic change scenarios.

06/17/2013 New paper out in Plos One on identifying the world's most climate change vulnerable species.

6/1/2013 We have a new paper on Colombian birds with visiting professor Raf Aerts.

05/22/2013 Mark Chynoweth recently published a paper on the impacts of feral goats on Pacific islands

05/03/2013 Cagan Sekercioglu receives the Whitley Gold Award from Princess Anne.

05/01/2013 Cagan Sekercioglu is chosen as a National Geographic Risk Taker

04/15/2013 Congratulations to Evan Buechley and Mark Chynoweth for getting NSF and TGLL fellowships.

03/25/2013 Documentary features conservation efforts of Evan Buechley.

02/20/2013 Prof. John Terborgh visits the University of Utah and holds a special seminar: Is Janzen-Connell a special case of keystone predation?

02/05/2013 Cagan Sekercioglu is giving a seminar at Harvard University Center for the Environment on "Turkey's Globally Important Biodiversity in Crisis."

02/04/2013 Sekercioglu is giving the monthly talk at the Nuttall Ornithological Club.

02/01/2013 Sekercioglu is in Boston to give 5 talks at Boston, Harvard, and Wellesley universities on the conservation ecology of the world's birds and Turkey's biodiversity crisis.

01/07/2013 Sekercioglu is teaching Ornithology this semester.

01/05/2013 Our lab's Red Butte bird banding and the visiting UU Shoshone-Goshute Youth Language Program (SYLAP) was on Turkish National TV (TRT).

11/30/2012 Birds may spread, not halt, ticks carrying the deadly Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever

11/02/2012 Sekercioglu interviewed on Park City Television's Mountain Morning Show

10/29/2012 New paper out: Balancing biodiversity with agriculture: Land sharing mitigates avian malaria prevalence

10/15/2012 Banding birds in the Harenna Forest of the Bale Mts National Park of Ethiopia

10/3/ 2012 New paper out: North American transmission of hemosporidian parasites in the Swainson's Thrush (Catharus ustulatus), a migratory songbird

10/1/2012 Our first satellite-tagged Egyptian vulture went from Eastern Turkey to Ethiopia in only 10 days, two weeks before Sekercioglu will make the same journey.

9/18/2012 Tracking brown bears & wolves, putting on Turkey's first Crittercams, and shooting Turkey's first National Geographic documentary in Kars, Turkey

9/1/2012 New paper out: Mapping Functional Traits: Comparing Abundance and Presence-Absence Estimates at Large Spatial Scales

8/30/2012 We just banded a new bird for Turkey at our Aras bird banding station in Igdir. Shikra is Turkey's 469th bird species

8/17/2012 For the first time in Turkey, we are satellite-tracking globally endangered Egyptian vultures

08/07/2012 Sekercioglu publishes a paper on Bird functional diversity and ecosystem services in tropical forests, agroforests and agricultural areas

08/03/2012 Natural History Museum of Utah's Scientist in the
Spotlight - Conserving birds around the world with Cagan Sekercioglu

08/01/2012 New Ph.D. students  Evan Buechley and Mark Chynoweth join the lab. Welcome to the U!

07/25/2012 Shoshone-Goshute Youth Language Program visits our lab's bird banding station at the Red Butte RNA and Native American students learn about bird ecology and conservation.

07/25/2012 Turkey's National Television (TRT) sends a TV crew to Salt Lake City to film the lab's bird research to be shown on the country's main news channel TRT Haber.

07/12/2012 Sekercioglu is among 84 scientists invited to Istanbul by Turkey's National Science Council for the first meeting of Turkish scientists working abroad.

07/10/2012 Sekercioglu is interviewed by Current Biology for a Turkey biodiversity feature.

06/30/2012 New paper published in The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology entitled Correlates of elevation specialisation in Southeast Asian tropical birds.

05/14/2012 Sekercioglu gave a talk on Turkey's biodiversity at the Turkish Embassy in Washington DC.

05/03/2012 Colleague Prof. Bill Laurance visits our lab and gives an excellent talk on tropical conservation.

04/26/2012 Our colleagues Prof. Josip Kusak and Dr. Dan Wenny visit the Sekercioglu Lab.

04/23/2012 Sekercioglu talks at the National Geographic Society: Turkey's First Wildlife Corridor: Connecting the Anatolian and Caucasus Biodiversity Hotspots.

04/20/2012 Sekercioglu is chosen to give the yearly talk to the Fisheries and Wildlife Graduate Student Association of Virginia Tech University.

03/26/2012 Cagan Sekercioglu is honored as a "Star Turk" by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.

03/22/2012 Prof. Richard Primack visits the U to give a seminar.

03/20/2012 Our recent papers on the effects of climate change on tropical birds and Turkey's biodiversity are among the most downloaded Biological Conservation articles.

03/05/2012 Our new paper on tropical birds and climate change is on BBC Nature News.

03/04/2012 We are interviewing the first PhD students for the lab. A great and inspiring group.

03/02/2012 Turkey's first wildlife corridor is the lead story on the Christian Science Monitor.

03/01/2012 Our lab's research is the spring 2012 cover story of Continuum, the University of Utah magazine.

02/29/2012 Our wetland ecology and restoration collaborator Prof. Sean Anderson visited us from California State University Channel Islands.

02/28/2012 The Daily Utah Chronicle - Birds serve as a warning of dangers in climate change.

02/24/2012 Our new paper on tropical birds and climate change is in the New York Times.

02/23/2012 Departmental seminar speaker Prof. Rodolfo Dirzo was hosted by the Sekercioglu lab.

02/16/2012 Our new paper on the effects of climate change on tropical birds is out.

02/13/2012 Turkey's First Wildlife Corridor project on National Geographic website.

02/09/2012 Collaborator Prof. Ravinder Sehgal visits the lab.

02/01/2012 New paper on bird dietary guild richness worldwide.

01/26/2012 Collaborator Prof. Peter Raven visits the lab.

01/09/2012 Cagan Sekercioglu is teaching Conservation Biology (Bio 3960) this spring.

01/01/2012 New paper on global paterns of specialization and coexistence in bird assemblages.

12/31/2011 Sekercioglu's National Geographic article on biodiversity conservation in Turkey.

12/29/2011 Our book "Winged Sentinels: Birds and Climate Change" is the "Book of the Year".

12/23/2011 Sekercioglu publishes in Science on Turkey's conservation crisis.

12/22/2011 Our Biological Conservation paper on biodiversity conservation in Turkey is in the New York Times.

12/03/2011 Our first lab visitor is collaborator Prof. Luc Lens. He liked the U so much, he is organizing a workshop here in April.

12/01/2011 Our comprehensive and up-to-date review of Turkey's biodiversity, habitats and conservation issues is out in Biological Conservation.

11/2011 Our new lab is complete and is looking great. Big thanks to Jose Rojas and the U crew who made it happen. Come visit.