Welcome Stephen De Lisle - new postdoc!

Posted by Erik Svensson 

I am pleased to introduce my new postdoc Stephen De Lisle, who recently defended his postdoc at University of Toronto, under the supervision of Prof. Locke Rowe. Stephen has a strong experimental evolutionary ecology background, complemented with skills in phylogenetic comparative methods and hence will fit well in to overall research profile of both my lab and the EXEB-environment in general. Stephen will stay in Lund for at least two years from now on, thanks to a large international collaborative grant that Tobias Uller obtained together with me, Charlie Cornwallis and Per Lundberg. Stephen will present some of his thesis research on next year's EXEB-meeting (Tuesday, November 22), which will follow in a separate blogpost. 

About Stephen's research, in his own words:

I am an evolutionary ecologist interested in understanding the adaptive origins of phenotypic diversity. Although my interests are broad, much of my research has focused on testing non-traditional models of sexual dimorphism and understanding how the evolution of such ‘ecological’ sexual dimorphisms may or may not influence the structure of ecological communities and the dynamics of evolutionary radiation.  I do this using a combination of experimental and comparative approached that bridge community ecology, microevolution, and macroevolution. 

Visit to EXEB by Masahito Tsuboi and talk about phenomics and the integration of micro- and macroevolution

Posted by Erik Svensson

For next week's EXEB-meeting (Tuesday August 23 at 10.00 in "Argumentet"), I am happy to welcome an outside visitor: Dr. Masahito Tsuboi from the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) and the "Macroevolution Group". Masahito is currently a postdoc in Thomas F. Hansen's lab at Oslo University.

Masahito is visiting my lab next week to discuss some future research collaboration, and will give a talk about his research entitled:


Bridging the gap between micro- and macro-evolution: a challenge of quantitative phenomics

Below is the Abstract of the talk and some information about Masahito's research background:

Abstract: One of the most enduring challenges in evolutionary biology is to understand how evolutionary processes observed at population levels scale up to the diversity observed at species or higher taxonomic levels. Over the past decades, theoretical maturation of quantitative genetics, development of phylogenetic comparative methods and accumulation of high quality phenotypic data have collectively start offering solutions to fundamental issues in linking micro- and macro-evolution. Applying quantitative genetic theories for macroevolutionary phenotypic data, my research tries to assess if and how tempo and mode of macroevolution could be understood by microevolutionary patterns. In my seminar, I will first briefly outline my idea and present some preliminary results. A stronger focus then would be placed on discussing the approach and further scopes.

About me: I obtained PhD degree last year from Uppsala University, Sweden, working with Prof. Niclas Kolm on brain size evolution in cichlids, pipefishes and seahorses primarily from above-species, macroevolutionary, perspectives. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral fellow funded by Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) based in University of Oslo, Norway, working with Prof. Thomas Hansen on the link between micro- and macro-evolution using dataset of vertebrate brain size, deer antler size, and fly wing morphology. 

"Fika" will be available. Everybody should be most welcome!

Half-time seminar on micro- and macroevolution by PhD-student John Waller (February 2, 13.00)

Posted by Erik Svensson 

As you already hopefully know, we will have our regular EXEB meeting in the morning of February 2 on the topic "Can the evoutionary process learn?", and it is Tobias Uller who organizes this interesting seminar. 

Later the same day, in the afternoon, there is another interesting EXEB-event: one of the PhD-students in the EXEB environment (John Waller), will have his half-time seminar with the following title:


"Connecting microevolutionary processes and macroevolutionary patterns in damselflies and dragonflies"

Locale: "Red Room", Ecology Building
Date and time: Tuesday, February 2, 13.00 

As many intern students, field and lab assistants have helped John to collect data for his PhD-work, we wish all those and others within and outside the EXEB-environment most welcome to this interesting seminar. Dr. Lars Råberg (Functional Zoology Unit), will be the opponent on John's half-time seminar and report. 

New lab-meeting on micro- and macroevolution of body size

Since this week's lab-meeting discussion about Anna's presentation took longer time than planned, we will discuss the paper by Uyeda et al. in PNAS this coming Tuesday instead, in "Argumentet" (13.00-15.00). Hope to see you all there, and I recommend you to read this important paper in detail before the meeting to have a good and productive discussion. Also, do not forget to take a look at Jerry Coyne's blogpost about the paper which you can find here.