FroSpects-meeting on non-adaptive and non-ecological speciation in Lund August 18 2012

During the past decade, the ecological theory of adaptive radiation and adaptive speciation has been a main focus of interest in much speciation research. Much of current thinking in this area assumes that incipient species are formed as a direct or indirect result of niche-based ecological differences and divergent natural selection.

However, more recently it has been an increased interest also in non-ecological and non-adaptive speciation in groups like birds, fish, amphibians and insects. Some radiations are simply not very likely to result from divergent ecological selection, as species are often ecologically similar and show high degree of niche conservatism, yet speciation obviously happens also in these groups. Behavior might play a crucial role in driving speciation processes in these circumstances, including learned mate preferences, sexual selection and sexual conflict. These and related topics will be the focus of one-day scientific meeting at Lund University (Sweden) on August 18 2012.

On August 18 2012, we are therefore proud to organize this one-day meeting (free of charge) entitled "The Role of Behaviour in Non-adaptive and Non-ecological Speciation".

This meeting is funded by the European Science Foundation's (ESF) Frontier's of Speciation Research FroSpects, and will be one of several post-conference symposia the day after The International Behavioural Ecology Congress ("ISBE 2012") that will take place between August 12 and August 17 2012. 

Note that although the ESF-meeting is free of charge, the preceeding ISBE-congress is not. The meeting is open both for ISBE-participants and those who wish to only come for to the speciation meeting. Coffee and refreshments will be served on August 18, but participants will have to fund and organize travel, meals and ackomodation for themselves.

In addition to three excellent invited keynote speakers (Dr. Rampal S. Etienne, Prof. Kerry Shaw and Prof. John Wiens), we will also accept contributed talks (15 minutes, including 3 minutes of questions) to this meeting. Send an abstract (100-200 words) to Dr. Maren Wellenreuther (maren.wellenreuther@biol.lu.se), no later than April 2012.  More general questions about the meeting can be answered by Prof. Erik Svensson (erik.svensson@biol.lu.se).

Organizing committé:


Prof. Erik Svensson
Dr. Machteld Verzijden
Dr. Maren Wellenreuther
Ms. Anna Runemark 

Our annual lab-barbecue in Dalby on July 2 2011

Our annual lab-barbecue took place at Lyftvägen in Dalby, as usual, and for the 12th season in a row (starting in the summer of 2000, in Lund). In spite of rain early on, it became very nice, and included good food, barbecue and "kubb"-spel. Thanks everyone for coming, and see some of you next year!

New researchpositions to apply for at the Biology Department in Lund!

The Biology Department has recently announced two senior positions that should hopefully attract the interest from some good applicants. One of these positions is Professor in Systematic Biology (no specific taxonomic speciality, i. e. open for both animal and plant scientists) and a Senior Lectureship in Conservation Biology. The deadline to send in applications for both of these positions i 15 September 2011. More information about these positions can be found here, here, here and here.


Please spread the information about these two excellent job opportunities in  your social networks and to friends, colleagues and putative candidates. Recently, it was decided the the Junior Lectureship in Biology was given to ecophysiologist/ecologist Dr. Caroline Isaksson (Oxford University, UK), who did her PhD-thesis at University of Gothenburg under the supervision of Professor Staffan Andersson, and who is currently postdoc at Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology. Our warmest gratulations to Caroline, and we are of course looking forward to have her as our future colleage.

Sexual conflict terminology covered by the "Nature"-blog

Some of you have probably heard about the paper that former PhD-student Tina and current PhD-student Josefin recently published in Animal Behaviour, where they analyzed the biased terminology in the sexual conflict litterature, and found some striking patterns. This study has now been discovered by the Nature News Blog in a recent blog post. Our warmest congratulations to Tina and Josefin to their study, which has already gained some impact in the scientific community. Hopefully, their provocative article will help to improve the research practice and clean up sloppy terminology in this field in the future.

Tomorrow's meeting starts at 14.00!

Tomorrow's lab-meeting starts at 14.00, rather than at 13.30, as I have teaching. Just so that you know.

On wings, genes, exaptations and the evolution of phenotypic novelty in treehoppers

Last week's lab-meeting on kin selection was cancelled, and since this discussion largely seems to be a semantic one and of little direct relevance to our own work on insects, I thought we should instead discuss an insect paper, now when the field season is rapidly approaching. After all, we are not behavioural ecologists and not so focussed on kin selection, but rather field evolutionary biologists, so this paper might be more central to our ongoing work.

The paper is a wonderful example of how evolution acts like a "tinkerer", rather than as an engineer, when novel structures evolve, and that new traits arise from already existing structures/genes as "exaptations", rather than evolve from scratch. In this case, the remarkable morphological structures we will discuss (see above!) are governed by genes which originally coded for wings! The paper I have in mind is a wonderful example of "evo-devo", i. e. the genetic and developmental basis of animal form and it deals with the morphological structures of treehoppers (Homoptera), a diverse insect group characterized by remarkable appendices on their thorax, of unknown adaptive function (see picture above!). The title is: "Body plan innovation in treehoppers through the evolution of an extra wing-like appendage". 

You can downloadthe paper here, and the abstract is found below. Time and place as usual: "Argumentet" at 14.30 on Wednesday May 25. Any fika volunteer?

Body plan innovation in treehoppers through the evolution of an extra wing-like appendage

 Prud'homme B. et al.

Body plans, which characterize the anatomical organization of animal groups of high taxonomic rank1, often evolve by the reduction or loss of appendages (limbs in vertebrates and legs and wings in insects, for example). In contrast, the addition of new features is extremely rare and is thought to be heavily constrained, although the nature of the constraints remains elusive2, 3, 4. Here we show that the treehopper (Membracidae) ‘helmet’ is actually an appendage, a wing serial homologue on the first thoracic segment. This innovation in the insect body plan is an unprecedented situation in 250 Myr of insect evolution. We provide evidence suggesting that the helmet arose by escaping the ancestral repression of wing formation imparted by a member of the Hox gene family, which sculpts the number and pattern of appendages along the body axis5, 6, 7, 8. Moreover, we propose that the exceptional morphological diversification of the helmet was possible because, in contrast to the wings, it escaped the stringent functional requirements imposed by flight. This example illustrates how complex morphological structures can arise by the expression of ancestral developmental potentials and fuel the morphological diversification of an evolutionary lineage.

Cancelled lab-meeting 13 May 2011

Due to too much accumulated work that has piled up this week while being in Stockholm and at the Crafoord meetings, the lab-meeting on kin selection and eusociality has to be cancelled, unfortunately. Perhaps next week instead?