LATEST NEWS

SSE was pleased to be able to offer 103 graduate/postdoc travel awards to the Montpellier meeting. We doubled the number of awards this year for the Second Joint Congress, and added three awards that were made possible from donations from members. Thank you! Continue reading to hear from a few of our travel award recipients.

The New Faculty Profile series highlights and introduces new Principal Investigators who are SSE members. This month we highlight Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton. Dr. Campbell-Staton is an assistant professor jointly appointed to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department and the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California Los Angeles studying how climate shapes demographic history and adaptation over prehistoric and contemporary time periods. Read his full profile here.

The New Faculty Profile series highlights and introduces new Principal Investigators who are SSE members. This month we highlight Dr. Sara Branco. Dr. Branco is an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Montana State University studying the ecology and evolution of fungi to further understand the ecological factors that generate and maintain fungal diversity. Read her full profile here.

Want candidates to discuss science issues? Curious about what your local candidate's stance is on food sustainability, energy policies, or the environment? Science Debate (sciencedebate.org) is a non-partisan non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that has invited all candidates currently running for House, Senate, and Gubernatorial seats to answer 10 questions on science policy prior to Election Day. You can help by encouraging candidates in your state and district to post their answers, by asking science-related questions at town-halls, or by hosting a Science Debate event with local candidates. Contact Sally Otto at policy@evolutionsociety.org to see how you can help add scientific issues to the discourse during these elections.

This year, the deadlines for the new Graduate Research Excellence Grants (GREG) have shifted. The R.C. Lewontin Early Awards (for students in the first two years of their PhD) will be announced in November 2018 with proposals due in mid-February. The Rosemary Grant Advanced Awards (for PhD candidates) will be announced in June 2019 with proposals due in September. Learn more about these grants and how to apply here.

Thank you to ESEB and the Evolution Congress organizers and sponsors for establishing a meeting Code of Conduct and a procedure for addressing inappropriate behavior! We are committed to promoting an inclusive and professional climate at our meetings and will continue to do so with our Safe Evolution initiative. We encourage anyone who has experienced or witnessed inappropriate behavior at our meetings to consult these procedures—designed to make reporting straightforward, keep investigations completely confidential, and set appropriate standards for behavior by all participants. Learn more here.

Congratulations to this year’s Hamilton Award winner, Christopher Pull from Royal Holloway University of London! Chris gave an outstanding talk on how ants control infections in colonies. The runners-up are Debora Goedert from Dartmouth College and Karin van der Burg from Cornell University. We were very impressed with all of the talks given by Hamilton Finalists at the Evolution 2018 meeting, and were pleased to be able to offer $500 travel stipends to all of the finalists. Learn more about the Hamilton Awards here.

The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) is pleased to announce a call for applicants to the position of Blog Editor Fellow to begin January 1, 2019. The Blog Editor Fellow will create and curate a blog highlighting the effective and essential work SSE members are doing to engage and educate the public and to interface with other SSE members. The Blog Editor Fellow will solicit, manage, and publish at least three articles per month from regular contributors, and will write one editorial per month on a topic of their choosing. The fellowship stipend will be $6,000 USD per year. Applications close October 1, 2018. Continue reading for more information.

If you are attending the Evolution meeting in Montpellier, be sure not to miss these great talks:

• SSE Presidential Address, Dr. Hopi Hoekstra. “The genetic basis of behavioral evolution.” August 22, 8:30 AM, Berlioz Room


• Gould Prize Talk, Dr. Tim Birkhead. “The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a Bird's Egg.” August 20, 6:30 PM, Berlioz Room


• Dobzhansky Award Talk, Dr. Amanda Kyle Gibson. “Bloody-minded parasites: unraveling coevolution in natural and experimental populations.” August 22, 9:30 AM, Berlioz Room.


• Hamilton Award Symposium, chair: Dr. Joel McGlothlin. August 19, 10:35 AM, 1:55 PM, and 4:05 PM, Berlioz Room

See the full schedule here. 

This month we highlight Dr. Emily Kane. Dr. Kane is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Georgia Southern University. She studies ecological and evolutionary biomechanics; specifically, locomotion, feeding, and the links between those systems. Read her full profile here.

The field of evolutionary biology is at its best when all of its members are supported by positive, safe, and healthy work environments. To reinforce a healthy environment for all, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) have worked together to develop Safe Evolution, a centralized campaign for our society membership to positively affect the climate at our conferences and positively impact all members in our field. Continue reading for a letter from SSE President Hopi Hoekstra with important information and links.

Please continue reading for a statement from the SSE Council regarding the investigation of one of our long-time members, Dr. Francisco Ayala, and the SSE Code of Conduct.

Congratulations to the 2018 Dobzhansky Prize winner, Amanda Kyle Gibson! Dr. Gibson is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University studying the evolution and ecology of infectious diseases. The Dobzhansky Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist. Learn more about the prize here.

The New Faculty Profile series highlights and introduces new Principal Investigators who are SSE members. This month we highlight Dr. Claudia Bank. Dr. Bank is the Principal Investigator of the Evolutionary Dynamics Group at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Oeiras, Portugal. She studies how populations adapt and diversify, with a specific interest in the role of epistasis during these processes. Read her full profile here.

Registration is now open for the new Employment Acquisition Skills Boot Camp with the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) on December 17-18 in Washington, DC. This program provides graduate students to senior scientists with the information, tools, and resources required to successfully identify and secure employment in a diversity of career pathways. SSE members can receive the discounted rate by emailing communications@evolutionsociety.org with their intent to register.

The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) is offering our US members a chance to meet with your lawmakers in your home state to inform science policy this summer through their annual Congressional District Visits event. Participating scientists either meet with their elected officials at the local district office or may invite them to visit their research facility. Registration closes July 19.  Learn more and register here.

If you were selected as a Hamilton Finalist or selected to receive a regular graduate/postdoc travel award for the Evolution 2018 meeting, you must pick up your check in person at the SSE Members Business Meeting on Tuesday Aug 21 from 5:30-6:10 pm CET in the Darwin Room in Le Corum. You do not need to attend the entire business meeting -- you may come by just to pick up your check.

If (and only if) you are presenting a poster during this time and cannot attend the business meeting, you must contact Kati Moore at communications@evolutionsociety.org to either:

(1) arrange to pick up your check at the SSE Presidential Address the following morning, or

(2) send a delegate to the SSE Members Business Meeting with a signed note from you authorizing them to pick up the check on your behalf.

Due to the large number of awards, we cannot make individual arrangements for check pick-up other than the options listed above.

Please email Kati Moore at communications@evolutionsociety.org ASAP if you are no longer able to attend the meeting.

Congratulations to the 14 W. D. Hamilton Award finalists! Each finalist will receive a $500 travel stipend to the Evolution meeting in Montpellier, and will present their research during the Hamilton Award Symposium. See the names of this year's finalists and learn more about the award here. 

On June 18, SSE, the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) submitted a comment to the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a proposed rule that would require that research conducted by the EPA be based on data that are publicly available. Continue reading for the full letter. 

The New Faculty Profile series highlights new Principal Investigators who are SSE members. This month we introduce Dr. Martha Muñoz. Dr. Muñoz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech studying ecological processes and evolutionary patterns related to physiology. Read her full profile here. 

The New Faculty Profile series highlights new Principal Investigators who are SSE members. This month we introduce Dr. Michael White. Dr. White is an Assistant Professor in the Genetics Department at the University of Georgia studying the evolution of sex chromosomes in threespine stickleback fish. Read his full profile here.

We recently updated our policy on data privacy and transparency. Read the full policy here.

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is pleased to announce the winner of the 2018 T. H. Huxley Award, Dr. Katie Grogan and colleagues Dr. Teresa W. Lee and Dr. Justine Liepkalns, who developed an educational activity for teaching evolutionary mechanisms. In the activity, students use a population of sticky notes to reveal the consequences of natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow on phenotype frequency. Read more here.

Congratulations to the 2018 winner of the R. A. Fisher Prize, Dr. Valerie Morley, for her paper “Dynamics of molecular evolution in RNA virus populations depend on sudden versus gradual environmental change” published in Evolution. The R. A. Fisher Prize is awarded annually by SSE for an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation paper published in the journal Evolution during a given calendar year. The award comes with a $1000 honorarium. Learn more about the prize and this year’s recipient here.

From 2010 to 2017, SSE offered one research award for early career students – the Rosemary Grant Award. SSE has since implemented a new awards program, the Graduate Research Excellence Grants, which include the Rosemary Grant Advanced Award for PhD candidates and the R. C. Lewontin Early Award for students in the first two years of their PhD. Continue reading to hear from past recipients of the original Rosemary Grant Award on how the award helped their graduate research work.