Scott V. Edwards

Faculty Support: Melinda Peterson

We study the evolutionary biology of birds and relatives, combining field, museum and genomics approaches to understand the basis of avian diversity, evolution and behavior. Our guiding approaches include population genetics, which provides a quantitative framework for studying speciation, geographic variation and genome evolution; systematics, which acknowledges that the focal species of any study has relatives that are behaviorally and ecologically no less interesting; and natural history, which gives meaning to the genes and genomic patterns we study.

Recent Publications

Shakya SB, Edwards SV, Sackton TB. 2025. Convergent evolution of noncoding elements associated with short tarsus length in birds. BMC Biol: 23:52.

Gemmell P, Sackton TB, Edwards SV, Liu JS. 2024. A phylogenetic method linking nucleotide substitution rates to rates of continuous trait evolution. PLoS Comput Biol: 20:e1011995.

Fang B, Edwards SV. 2024. Fitness consequences of structural variation inferred from a House Finch pangenome. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A: 121:e2409943121.

Bravo GA, Schmitt CJ, Edwards SV. 2021. What Have We Learned from the First 500 Avian Genomes? Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 52:611–639.

Burley, J. T., Orzechowski, S. C. M., Sin, S. Y. W., & Edwards, S. V. 2022. Whole-genome phylogeography of the blue-faced honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis) and discovery and characterization of a neo-Z chromosome. Molecular Ecology. doi:10.1111/mec.16604

Courses Taught

OEB 125 Genomics, Ecology and Evolution
OEB 190 Biology and Diversity of Birds
OEB 275r Topics in Phylogenomics, Population Genomics and Phylogeography
OEB 362 Research in Molecular Evolution 
FR21 The Evolutionary Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds: Fossils, Genomes and Behavior