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Contact Information


      Department of Biological Sciences
      University of Toronto Scarborough
      1265 Military Trail
      Toronto, Ontario, Canada; M1C 1A4
      M1C 1A4

Joining the lab...


Weir Lab opportunities (details here).


The Labs Academic Family Line


The Weir Lab PhD line follows: In the beginning (year 1585) there was a brilliant chap by the name of Galileo Galilei who begat Benedetto Castellir in 1610, who begat Giovanni Borelli in ?, who begat Marcello Malpighi in 1653, who begat Antonio Valsalva in 1687, who begat Giovanni Morgagni in 1701, who begat Antonio Scarpa in 1770, who begat Ignaz Dollinger in 1794, who begat Andreas Roschlaub in 1795, who begat Louis Agassiz (a lifelong opposer of Charles Darwin!) in 1830, who begat David Jordan (a supporter of Darwin) in 1873, who begat Charles Gilbert in 1883, who begat Joseph Grinnell in 1913, who begat Ian Mctaggart-Cowan in 1935, who begat Peter Grant in 1964, who begat Dolph Schluter in 1983, who begat Jason Weir in 2007, who begat (see below)...


Principal Investigator


   Jason T. Weir

      Professor (University of Toronto)

      Research Associate (Royal Ontario Museum, Department of Ornithology)

      Email: jason.weir [at] utoronto.ca
      Curriculum Vitae (updated Sept 2017)









Current Graduate Students


   Gihyun Yoo

      PhD student

 






   Ellen Nikelski

      PhD student: Mitonuclear incompatibilities in Amazonian birds.

 






   Else Mikkelsen

      PhD student: Whole genome characterization of hybrid speciation in the Golden-crowned Manakin and in skuas.

 





2023/2024 Undergrad Trainees


   Catriona Morphy

      Honours thesis: Butterfly genomics and taxonomy

 

   Shay Ravi

      Honours thesis: Butterfly genomics and taxonomy

 

   Hasan Rizwan

      Honours thesis: Butterfly genomics and taxonomy

 

   Jacob Chol Abit

      Butterfly identification and processing

 

   Emma Pecan

      Butterfly identification and processing

 

   Sheena Bruce

      Butterfly identification and processing

 

   Andrew Ahmed

      Butterfly identification and processing

 

Past Post Docs


   Jordan Bemmels

      Post Doctoral fellow 2019-2022: Biogeography and population genomics of kiwi and flycatchers.

      Website
 





Past Grad Students


   Vanessa Luzuriaga

      PhD May 2023: 1) Role of ecological differentiation in acellerating evolution in birds of the Amazon basin. 2) hybridization between the elevational replacing Ramphocelus melanogaster and R. carbo

 






   Sean Anderson

      PhD May 2022: The role of competition and divergent selection in accelerating functional trait evolution.

 








   Aurea Cronemberger

      PhD 2020: Hybrid zones in Hypoecnemis antbirds.

 











   Ashley Bramwell

      MSc May, 2019: Phylogeography of North American flycatchers.

 






   Maya Faccio

      PhD Dec, 2018: Phylogeography of varzea specialists.

      Email: maya.faccio [at] mail.utoronto.ca




   Vanessa Luzuriaga

      MSc August, 2018: Rates of trait evolution in Andean and Amazonian birds.

 






   Paola Pulido-Santacruz

      PhD December, 2016: Role of extinction in driving latitudinal diversity gradients and the genetic architecture of reproductive isolation in morphologically cryptic avian taxa of Amazonia.

      Email: p.pulidosantacruz [at] mail.utoronto.ca



   Alfredo Barrera

      PhD September 2016: Speciation in Amazonian manakins with a special focus on hybrid speciation in Lepidothix manakins.

 






   Diogo de Lavareda Medeiros

      PhD August 2016: Phylogeography of Ceratopipra manakins of the Amazon basin.

      Email: d_lavareda [at] hotmail.com





   Adam Lawson

      MSc December, 2013: Climatic niche evolution in birds.

      Email: adam.lawson [at] utoronto.ca








2022/2023 Undergrad Trainees


   Sheena Bruce

      Butterfly field work in the Greater Toronto Area

 

   Mishal Abbas

      Butterfly field work in the Greater Toronto Area

 

   Jingwei Dai

      Honour's Thesis: Butterfly genomics and taxonomy

 

   Eric Wilson

      Honour's Thesis: Butterfly genomics and taxonomy

 

   Chunwen Weng

      Honour's Thesis: Conservation genomics of Amazonian Pipra manakins

 

   Catriona Morphy

      Butterfly specimen processing

 

   Yue Chen

      Butterfly specimen processing

 

   Clair Yang

      Butterfly specimen processing

 

   Hanyu Pan

      DNA isolation

 

2021/2022 Undergrad Trainees


   Ardashis Kasjishian

      Butterfly field work in the Greater Toronto Area

 

   Judy Lam

      Butterfly field work in the Greater Toronto Area

 

   Sydney Macleod-Asdullah

      Butterfly field work in the Greater Toronto Area

 

   Zoe Odulinski

      Butterfly field work in the Greater Toronto Area

 

2020/2021 Undergrad Honour Students


   Jessica Chan

      Honour's Thesis: Mitonuclear introgression in Ramphocelus carbo and R. melanogaster.

 

   Anna Dvaladzen

      Honour's Thesis: Whole genome assesment of Fst in Ramphocelus carbo and R. melanogaster.

 

   Amanda Nelson

      Honour's Thesis: Rates of gene flow in autosomes and the z-chromosome in R. carbo and R. melanogaster.

 

   Yankai Wu

      Honour's Thesis: Mitogenomes in Ramphocelus carbo and R. melanogaster.

 

2019/2020 Ten Bird Genomes Project


   Ten Bird Genomes Project, 2019/2020

      Ten UTSC undergrad honour students each sequenced, assembled and annotated the genome of a different Canadian bird. People from left to right. Front row: POS1, Adam El-Menini, Arsham Javaherdashti, Yahye Abdi, Amanda Nelson, Abdul Afzal, Shawanah Rahman, Vethushan Ramalingam. Back row: POS1, Else Mikkelsen (Project Coordinator), Jason Weir (Project Principal Investigator), Vernon Fong. Funds for this project were generously supplied by the Office of the Vice-Principal Research, the Department of Biological Sciences, and NSERC.

 




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