Merry Christmas and Happy New EXEB-year!

Posted by Erik Svensson

The year 2015 is approaching the end, and I wish all EXEB-members a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I think we have had a great year and many exciting and intellectually stimulating lab-meetings where (at least I) have learned a lot and got many new insights. EXEB has grown rapidly in short time - particularly since Tobias Uller have recruited several new co-workers - and we do now also have several hardworking interns, field assistants, laboratory assistants, PhD-students, Master's students and postdocs. All our permanent and temporary co-workers - nobody mentioned, nobody forgotten - do a tremendous job, both in terms of actual work performed, but also in contributing to a friendly and intellectually stimulating research environment.

Some statistics: If we count only the "core" EXEB members (who are in Lund and have formal positions), we are 11 in total (3 PI:s, 3 PhD-students, 4 postdocs and one research engineer). Counting a bit more generously, we are 13, since we have two affiliated PhD-students from Sussex University (Katrine Lund-Hansen)  and Manchester University (Miguel Gomez), who Jessica Abbott and I are co-advisors of, respectively.

Looking back upon 2015 in terms of research achievements, it has been a very succesful year, I think we can say without any hesitation. I have not made an official tally of joint publications, but I note that Tobias team had an interesting article about asymmetric species interactions in hybrid zones of lizards in Ecology Letters, and Jessica published a model paper about how self-fertilization and inbreeding might limit sexual antagonism in Journal of Evolutionary Biology. As for myself, I was happy to get our long-term time-series analysis of the signature of negative frequency-dependent selection in damselfly morphs published in American Naturalist. John Waller got his first thesis-chapter about imperfect detection and mark-recapture analysis of selection published in Methods in Ecology & Evolution. Lastly, and importantly, Jessica Abbott was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in October, the first of two at the Biology Department in Lund. All in all, a very succesful year for EXEB and its members, I think.

The future looks bright, I think, if the trend in 2015 will continue, but now for something lighter: the evolutionary origin of Santa Claus. It was Beatriz Willink pointed me to this very interesting blog post, which aims to do a phylogenetic analysis of the evolutionary origin and allopatric divergence of different Santa Claus phenotypes. It is from the blog "EEB and Flow", and R-code is provided, should you be interested in exploring this fascinating topic in depth. Enjoy!

Introducing new EXEB member: Antonio Cordero

Posted by Erik Svensson on behalf of Antonio Cordero

New postdoc: Antonio Cordero

I am a new postdoc in the research group of Tobias Uller. Broadly speaking, my work will aim to address important conceptual gaps concerning the role of developmental plasticity in ecology and evolution of reptilian systems. I recently completed my PhD at Iowa State University, USA, where I studied the developmental basis of phenotypic innovation and repeatability in turtles. My work integrated embryology, genetics, phylogenetics, and morphometrics. In Lund, I plan to continue using a multidisciplinary approach to address compelling questions in ecological and evolutionary developmental biology.

Happy New EXEB year 2015!

Posted by Erik Svensson

On behalf of myself and all EXEB members, I wish us all a Happy New 2015, and I hope it will be a succesful as 2014 was. Here, I briefly summarize my own subjective impressions of the past year and speculate a little bit about the future.

2014 was very dynamic and a lot of positive things happened. Maren Wellenreuther and Machteld Verzijden got new jobs and moved to Denmark and New Zeeland, respectively. Tobias Uller started his position in Lund on 50 %, while finishing his position in Oxford. Viktor Nilsson-Örtman and Katie Duryea both got postdoctoral scholarships, from The Swedish Research Council (VR) and The National Science Foundation (NSF) and thus joined EXEB. Beatriz Willink started as a PhD-position in August. Thus, both influx and outflux in terms of members, and currently Tobias is in the process of recruiting several postdocs, so I anticipate that the EXEB meetings will be enriched by new faces with interesting new backgrounds soon.

In terms of major research grants, it has also been a succesful year. Both Jessica and I got grants from the Crafoord Foundation this spring, and Tobias got a three-year grant from the Swedish Research Council in November. It is if course very satisfying to get these grants, given the stiff competition and small margins these days, as they also help us to do the research we really want to do.

Publication-wise, it has also been a good year, with articles appearing in many good journals. For me and Jessica, perhaps the highlight was our PNAS-article about sexual selection on Wing Interference Patterns (WIP:s) in Drosophila melanogaster, and all the media attention it got. Tobias and his co-workers made a splash in Nature in October this year with their provocative essay "Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?", which also resulted in a discussion on this blog.

What about 2015 and the future? I am optimistic in both the short- and the long-term. I feel that we have been able to build a creative space for us as PI:s and for our students and postdocs and that we have an excellent platform to strengthen evolutionary biology in Lund within our department. It is now almost five years since the Department of Biology in Lund was formed as a merger between two old departments: The Department of Ecology and the Department of Cell- and Organismal Biology (COB). Evolutionary biology has, for several complex and historical reasons, not had a very strong visible profile in Lund.

The reasons for this historical neglect of evolutionary biology in Lund are both structural and a result of strong  and very biased personal opinions by past and some current leaders of our department. For several reasons (I strongly disagree with these views, however), evolutionary biology has not been percceived as a "real" or independent research field in Lund. Worse, it has sometimes even been dismissed by some with the argument that "everybody does evolutionary biology" or even "we should leave evolutionary biology to Uppsala instead, it is they who have an Evolutionary Biology Centre (EBC)".

Needless to say, I think these views are both wrong and outdated, but their existence points to some of the problems that we have ahead of us if we want to strengthen the evolutionary biology profile in Lund. I feel that it is more or less futile to try to convince the leadership at the department as a whole that evolutionary biology should become of one of Lund's profile research areas, because conservatism tends to increase up along the career ladder.

Instead, we need to build from below, by setting a good example: by recruiting excellent postdocs and PhD-students (which we do already have), by getting grants and by publishing our research in excellent high-quality scientific journals. Then, and only then, can we influence the department at the higher level and force the leadership to admit that evolutionary biology is indeed an independent and interesting research field in itself that deserves some higher recognition than it currently has got. And to achieve this goal, we should try to keep EXEB what it is already: an intellectually very dynamic research environment where we regularly meet and discuss science and exchange idéas, co-supervise students and postdocs and share equipment, skills and knowledge.

We should of course always be aware of the competition with other groups - both from within the department and from outside - but also do not hesitate to collaborate with other groups, such as the Theoretical and Population Ecology Group or Molecular Ecology and Evolution Laboratory, when it can help us to achieve our long-term goals to influence the Biology Department and strengthen evolutionary biology in Lund. 

Thankyou all for a very nice 2014 and see you again in 2015!

EXEB shrinks - but shows overcompensatory growth: introducing new members

Posted by Erik Svensson


EXEB is our own and dynamic research environment, and as such there is (and indeed should be!) a high turnover of new and old members, and a healthy balance between inflow (newcomers) and outflow (migrants). Recently, three co-workers have left us to take up new positions.

Our most recent outgoing migrants from EXEB include Tom Gosden, who has now moved back to Australia to start a DECRA Junior Research Position, Machteld Verzijden who has moved to Aarhus University for a new postdoc and Maren Wellenreuther, who has moved to New Zeeland to commence a position as Senior Scientist at the Plant & Food Research Institute (though Maren will be affiliated to Lund part-time for the coming couple of years). We thank Tom, Machteld and Maren for their time in Lund and wish them good luck in their new positions.

Here, we also welcome some new EXEB members, which are briefly introduced below. First, we are happy to welcome Tobias Uller, who is in the process of establishing himself in Lund as a faculty member at the Biology Department, after obtaining a prestiguous fellowship from The Wallenberg Foundation. This large grant enables him to build a research group in Lund. Tobias has research interests and competence that is largely complementary to already existing expertise within EXEB, and we are looking forward to integrate both him and his forthcoming PhD-students and postdocs to our research environment. His main interests is the role of developmental plasticity in evolution, and he will work with both invertebrates (Daphnia) and reptiles (lizards) to study these important questions.

Tobias Uller

We also welcome our new PhD-student Beatriz Willink, who is from Costa Rica and who has a research background as a herpetologist, with special interests in colour polymorphisms and sexual selection. Beatriz will work under my supervision and will focus on the macroevolutionary consequences of sexual selection and colour evolution in Coenagrionidae ("pond damselflies"), using a combination of field experiments, observations and comparative approaches. She obtained a scholarship from The World Bank to do her PhD in Lund and she has already integrated quite well in to the EXEB environment, as she has been here for one field season and several months.  

Beatriz Willink

Next, we welcome Viktor Nilsson-Örtman as a new incoming postdoc. Viktor recently obtained a postdoctoral research grant from The Swedish Research Council (VR). He will spend the first part of this three-year grant at the University of Toronto in the laboratory of Locke Rowe, before he joins Lund and EXEB. Viktor has a strong background in ecological developmental biology, working with latitudinal variation in larval growth rates of damselflies of the genus Enallagma. Viktors expertise on the larval aquatic life-stage will largely complement our ongoing research on adult odonates, and we are looking forward to bring him in to the EXEB environment. 

                                                                      Viktor Nilsson-Örtman

Another postdoc who will join us now in late September 2014 is Katie Duryea from Dartmouth College (New Hampshire, USA), who did her PhD in the lab of Ryan Calsbeek, and who has a background as a herpetologist and Anolis-lizard biologist. Katie recently obtained a prestiguous outgoing postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which enables her to spend two years in Sweden and to join EXEB. Katie is interested in postcopulatory sexual selection and sperm competition, and she has a strong bioinformatic and molecular biology background, having worked also in the laboratories of Hopi Hoekstra at Harvard University and with Kelly Zammudio at Cornell University, prior to entering the PhD-programme at Dartmouth. During her postdoc in Lund, Katie will work on postcopulatory sexual selection in the polymorphic damselfly Ischnura elegans, taking advantage of soon available transcriptomic and genomic resources for this species, as well as our large outdoor cages at Stensoffa Field Station. 

Katie Duryea

Finally, we also welcome Rosa Sanchéz, who originally did her PhD at University of Vigo (Spain), and who is currently on her second postdoc in Barcelona, where she currently studies mechanisms of postzygotic isolation in mammals. However, Rosa has a solid background as an odonatologist, having worked in the laboratory of Adolfo Cordero during her PhD. Rosa will study the genomic signature of  hybridiziation between Ischnura elegans and its sister species I. graellsii in Spain. Last year, she obtained a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship from the EU, which enables her to come to Lund and join EXEB in spring 2015. 

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 Rosa Sanchéz

Happy New Year 2012! Let's start with some social activity and a lab-meeting

I hope everybody have enjoyed your well-deserved holidays, and you are now full of energy when returning to Lund! What else could then be better than to start with some social activity? I suggest we aim for this on Tuesday January 3 2012, when we meet at 18.00 at the pub "Bishop Arms" in Lund. We will then have time to eat (if we wish to), and can decide if we want to stay in the pub the whole evening, go to another one, or even go for a late movie around 21.00.

A new year also means new intellectual and scientific challenges. One such challenge is to always question old "truths", including once own's scientific biases. One such "truth", which I have myself defended in a recent blog post, is the importance of carefully distinguishing between proximate and ultimate explanations in evolutionary biology. I wrote this blog post after a recent ASAB-meeting in London in December, when both I and Machteld Verzijden were critical of Malin Ah-Kings suggestion that evolutionary explanations ("ultimate" explanations" for why animals reproduce ("animals reproduce to maximize their fitness") could be replaced by the proximate explanation ("animals reproduce for the sake of pleasure"). As I pointed out, these two explanations are not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary, and adress different "layers" of reality.

My own position here is not very controversial, but rather mainstream among today's evolutionary biologists, and I referred to the important conceptual insights by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and ethologist Niko Tinbergen, who laid the groundwork for this way of viewing nature and biology. It is now 50 years ago since Ernst Mayr published his important paper in Science entitled "Cause and effect in biology", and time is therefore mature to return to this classic paper and critically examine if its main message is still valid. We should therefore read this paper on this weeks lab-meeting (Wednesday, January 4 at 13.00), together with a new critical review in the same journal by Kevin Laland and colleagues entitled: "Cause and Effect in Biology Revisited: is Mayr's Proximate.Ultimate Dichtomy Still useful?"

These two papers should be read in conjunction (download them here and here), and well ahead before the lab-meeting, as these are important but difficult concepts which hold a central position in evolutionary biology. In particular, we should ask ourselves if Mayr's rigid dichotomy and position (he was rigid in many other areas, e. g. sympatric speciation) is still useful, or if it hampers further conceptual advances, as argued by Laland et al. Could it even be that Mayr's position at the time when it was formulated was necessary to get rid of "murky thinking", just like George C. Williams hardcore gene selectionist standpoint was necessary to get rid of naive group selectionism? But could it be so that both the proximate-ultimate dichotomy and the dogmatic gene selectionist standpoint have now played out their role, as the former naive views have since long been abandoned and pose no serious threat anymore to clear thinking?

Lab-meeting details and reminder: Wednesday January 4, in "Argumentet" at 13.00. Any fika volunteer?

Our research is featured in TREE and we get a cover photo!

In the latest issue of Trends in Ecology & Evolution, the cover photo is a couple of mating damselflies (Ischnura elegans), one of our favourite study species. It is of course very pleasing to see both this photo on the cover, and the flattering coverage of our research in a a review article by Charlie K. Cornwallis and Tobias Uller, entitled Towards an evolutionary ecology of sexual traits. Cornwallis and Uller discusses a number of recent articles about the dynamics of sexual selection over several generations, including a paper published by Tom Gosden and me entitled Spatial and temporal dynamics in a sexual selection mosaic (in Evolution, 2008).

Here is the abstract of the review article by Cornwallis and Uller:

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Charlie K. Cornwallis^a, and Tobias Uller^a

^a Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, UK, OX1 3PS

Empirical studies of sexual traits continue to generate conflicting results, leading to a growing awareness that the current understanding of this topic is limited. Here we argue that this is because studies of sexual traits fail to encompass three important features of evolution. First, sexual traits evolve via natural selection of which sexual selection is just one part. Second, selection on sexual traits fluctuates in strength, direction and form due to spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity. Third, phenotypic plasticity is ubiquitous and generates selection and responses to selection within and across generations. A move from purely gene-focused theories of sexual selection towards research that explicitly integrates development, ecology and evolution is necessary to break the stasis in research on sexual traits.