Wyoming AOU Trip

I got screwed by American Airlines today. My friend Shawn and I were booking tickets for the same flight to Denver. Hey bought first, but when I went to buy the same exact flight a moment later, the price went up a 100 bucks! Shawn's purchase must have reached some kind of price threshold. Needless to say, I was pissed.

My excitement for this coming trip outweighs the hurt from my bank account though. We're going to the 125th meeting of the American Ornithological Union in Laramie, Wyoming. This is only my second conference ever, the first being an absolutely mind-blowing trip to Mexico for the North American Ornithological Conference last fall. I'll have to post about that trip sometime. This conference is hosted by Craig Benkmen, a really neat guy who studies ecological evolution of Crossbills (Loxia), and their coevolution with conifer cones. Check out his site for more details on his research.

Shawn and I are going to Colorado and Wyoming from August 5th - August 12th, doing some birding and herping with friends, and then presenting posters at the conference, which has an awesome line-up in its program.

My poster was supposed to be:

Role of primary hooklets in copulation in the Northern Rough-winged Swallow. NICHOLAS D.
SLY, Lab. Ornithol., Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, and DAVID W. WINKLER, Dept. Ecol. & Evol.
Biol. Cornell Univ.

Long story short, I won't be presenting that poster. Instead, I'll be presenting a poster along the lines of:

Comparative phylogeography of Hispaniolan endemic birds. NICHOLAS D. SLY, Lab. Ornithol., Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, and IRBY J. LOVETTE, Dept. Ecol. & Evol. Biol. Cornell Univ.

I'll be posting about my research projects soon, if anyone is interested.

If anyone else is going to the conference, let me know!