Nicholas Mason
Louisiana State University, LA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Tropical mountains hold some of the richest variety of species on Earth. Habitats change quickly with elevation, and narrow bands of high-elevation habitat form isolated "sky islands." These can host specialized communities that are cut off from one another.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
ornithology
birds
avian diversification
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2030
What they work on
- Sequence whole genomes from populations of about 30 bird species in Andean Polylepis forests and grasslands to measure how connected populations are across isolated forest patches.
- Test whether species traits, such as the ability to fly long distances, explain why some Andean sky island bird species have more connected populations than others.
- Re-evaluate species classification of Polylepis birds using integrative taxonomy, combining genomic data with bill shape, body size, feather coloration and song.
More about the research
This project asks how such isolation drives the formation and maintenance of new bird species. It focuses on Polylepis forests in the Central Andes of Peru and Bolivia, the highest-elevation forests in the world (3,500–5,000 meters). These forests are broken into patches of varying size and connectivity, and the ecosystem is understudied and at risk.
Why it matters
Knowing how isolated high-Andean bird populations are, and whether current species names reflect real biological units, could inform conservation of fragmented, at-risk Polylepis forests in Peru and Bolivia. The project also documents biodiversity in remote regions of South America and builds museum collections that other researchers can use.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Daniel Proud
Moravian University, PA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Build a phylogenomic framework for two Neotropical harvestman clades using ultraconserved elements (UCEs), drawing specimens from natural history museum collections and field expeditions.
Akinobu Watanabe
New York Institute of Technology, NY·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Measure how brain and skull shapes have influenced each other's evolution across more than 350 bird species, using CT imaging of collection specimens and high-density 3D shape analysis.
Gustavo Hormiga
George Washington University, DC·Ecology & Evolution
Discover and formally describe new Neotropical velvet worm species in the family Peripatidae, combining high-throughput sequence data with modern morphological techniques to estimate the region's true species diversity.
The school
Louisiana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $431M a year on research, 323 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.