Dr. Scott A. Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is an evolutionary biologist interested in the utility of natural hybrid zones and recent radiations for understanding the genetic bases of traits involved in reproductive isolation, population divergence, and speciation. He is also interested in using hybrid zones to investigate the impacts of anthropogenic change, including climate change, on species distributions, interactions, and evolution. Dr. Taylor is innately curious about the natural world and spent my childhood days exploring the forests, streams, lakes and rivers of Ontario, Canada. His lifetime interest in the generation and maintenance of biodiversity, and passion for natural history, led me to pursue training in wildlife biology at the University of Guelph and in evolutionary genetics at Queen's University. Most recently, he spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology using genomics to understand hybrid zone dynamics in a number of avian systems.

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Kathryn Grabenstein is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on how individuals' mating decisions contribute to the semi-permeable nature of species barriers. Combining genomics and field studies, I investigate the role pre-mating behaviors play in the hybridization between black-capped and mountain chickadees to assess how sexual selection acts to maintain species barriers. Additionally, I investigate how large, landscape-scale human modifications, such as urban development, can have unforeseen evolutionary consequences, such as breaking well-established species barriers.

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