I’m back from the NAOC 2012 meeting in Vancouver. More on the meeting in the next post. I just want to highlight the accomplishments of 2 good friends of mine. First, my former grouse watcher and current lab-mate Conor Taff won one of the student presentation awards for his talk on the effects of breeding density on sexual selection in Common Yellowthroats. Conor gave a really impressive talk based on a great analysis of the parentage data from the yellowthroat population he has been working on for a number of years.

Second, congrats to Jim Rivers for receiving the American Ornithologists’ Union Ned K. Johnson Young Investigator Award. This is a relatively new award, set up in honor of Ned Johnson who was on my dissertation committee at Berkeley before passing away. Very happy my friend Jim was honored with this award- Jim has always been a great scientist, and it’s great that he was also recognized for all the work he’s done to get young ornithologists to feel welcome in the AOU. Jim has always been a force of nature at these conferences.

I haven’t found any grand repository for all the awards given across all the societies during this joint meeting, so I’m sure I am missing other noteworthy honors.