Karla Vargas wins Best Poster at AZ/NM Joint Annual Meeting of the Wildlife and Fisheries Societies

Karla Leonor Vargas  won the best Poster at the (Student) Poster competition at the AZ/NM Joint Annual Meeting of the Wildlife and Fisheries Societies in Flagstaff, AZ Feb 4-6, 2016. Her poster was titled Phylogenomic analyses of bobwhite quail in Southern Arizona and Mexico. 

The topic of her poster involves the masked bobwhite, a species of quail native to southern Arizona (US) and Sonora (Mexico), which is on the verge of extinction. Karla's study is employing a high-throughput targeted genomic capture approach to identify the closest extant relative to the masked bobwhite.  Populations of other subspecies have been sampled throughout Mexico and the US, and this newly gained phylogenetic information will also allow managers to make informed decisions to aid recovery efforts for the endangered masked bobwhite.