SMBE Mid-Career Excellence Award - Matt Pennell
This year's SMBE Mid-Career Excellence Award goes to Matt Pennell, professor @cornelluniversity.bsky.social
Visit our website to learn more about the SMBE Faculty Awards
๐ smbe.org/faculty-awards
#society
Safe to say that we are very excited about this here at ESEB!
Huge thanks to Brian Golding for entrusting us with the fantastic service that you have created and curated for the years!
Follow @evoldir.bsky.social
๐ฃ EvolDir is now managed by @eseb.bsky.social!
We are delighted to be taking the reins and express our gratitude to both Brian Golding who began this service to the community in the mid-1980s and to @rdmpage.bsky.social who ran this account until now ๐
You can now find evoldir here: evoldir.net
Congratulations Gina! ๐
One of Ireland's less common butterflies, the green hairstreak, in a rewilding part of the farm yesterday.
Rewilding isn't just about getting more trees and forests back, but increasing diversity and abundance of *all* our natural species and ecosystems.
Insightful summary of an extraordinary person being extraordinarily fired: "you don't silence a woman of color who raised concerns about racism by silencing her...The fingerprints are distributed perfectly across the system." www.linkedin.com/pulse/uclas-...
Special Issue on Genetic Rescue is out ๐๐๐
The 21 papers on the SI highlight how evolutionary biology can enhance resilience & long-term survival of biodiversity. Introducing genetically diverse individuals can boost fitness in small, isolated populations ๐งฌ๐ฟ
doi.org/10.1111/eva.70225
Evolution 2026 meeting logo. Clilp art of a globe and laptop showing a virtual presentation. Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Global Meeting Participation.
SSE offers free virtual #Evol2026 registration to all countries in our Global Membership Assistance program, including India, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and 152 countries and territories around the world. Request your free registration code today! www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...
I can't be the only one who is made /uncomfortable/ by the way that razor clams burrow into sand, right?
The final moments of this video by Kate Crump on the Oregon coastline are sort of the crowning glory of horror. ๐ฌ
But how does this even work?
Let's talk about bivalve mobility (if we must).
Do come listen to this public talk โ open to all โ by @danielbolnick.bsky.social. So happy to be hosting him in Bangalore!
Led by my talented PhD student @justine-armg.bsky.social weโre running a #meta-analysis of #cross-sex-genetic-correlations in fitness components.
If you have unpublished data or know of studies that might not appear in a systematic search, please reach out, weโd love to include them!
Please share!
Looking forward to this, and some fun discussion that will hopefully follow!
one of the greatest human triumphs of my lifetime is the relentless, unceasing, heroic effort by DECADES' worth of doctors and scientists to find a cure for a disease much of the world didn't take seriously for years because it predominantly affected a community they thought kinda deserved it
A photograph I took quite early on New Year's Day, 2019, while walking on the Isle of Purbeck during the research for my book Ring The Hill, not long before I did a tweet using the photo and this same caption. I imagine it won't have as much impact here, since loads of people have since reused it, and the phrase is now more widely known. It is still very very true, though. Lots of things are solved by walking. Although not everything, obviously.
Solvitur ambulando is my favourite Latin phrase. It means "it is solved by walking".
#ProtistsOnSky
no 'swimming' by ๐๐ข๐ฎ๐ฑ๐บ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ๐ข, definitively no 'staying still'. just a relaxed walk towards the lunch...
SMBE Best Graduate Student Paper
SMBE is calling for nominations for Best Graduate Student Papers of 2025, recognizing outstanding papers in @molbioevol.bsky.social and @genomebiolevol.bsky.social
๐๏ธ Deadline Feb 27
Articles published in 2025 are eligible. The nominated student must be first author; anyone can nominate authors.
New paper out in PNAS!!! ๐
Do more plasmid copies mean faster evolution?
๐งต Dive into the story
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Registration now open for @embo.org workshop on the evolution of biological interactions on April 24 - 27, 2026! Come join us in Taipei, Taiwan to see how interactions shaped the genomes of various organisms and meeting people from across the globe. Info: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio...
This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.
A real treat to watch a male Lyrebird perform at the Healesville Sanctuary yesterday. Truly magnificent.
MBE | Cost of Altered Translation Accuracy Shapes Adaptation to Antibiotics in E. coli Bacteria with varying levels of accuracy in protein synthesis (blue cells, using tRNAs to produce amino acid chains) face antibiotics (purple demons). Mistranslation exacts a fitness cost, and as errors increase (red amino acids), so does the cost (the red rubbish heap under each cell). Wild type, mistranslating and hyper-accurate cells also experience different ancestral fitness costs from antibiotic exposure. Strains adapt to antibiotics with varying success, using distinct mutations (represented by the nucleotide sequences). Image credit: Nishant Asawadekar
@laasya2.bsky.social @deepaagashe.bsky.social et al. quantified the growth cost of mistranslation rates and exposure to antibiotics in E. coli, finding that altered translation accuracy can shape adaptive outcomes.
๐ doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf312
๐๏ธ Nishant Asawadekar
#evobio #molbio
How do bacteria deal with double costs? And how costly are unusual levels of mistranslation anyway? In short - antibiotics are more of an issue than less/more mistranslation, but the latter changes how populations deal with antibiotics. For the long story, check out our new paper!
MVIF 45
We have an early New Year present for you:
๐The new #MVIF program is out๐
Highlights:
๐ณ๐ต Bishwash Thapa
๐ฎ๐ท Zahra Nezamivand Chegini
Keynote:
๐จ๐ญ @saramitri.bsky.social
Talks:
๐บ๐ธ @liliancaesar.bsky.social
๐ฎ๐น Haseeb Manzoor
๐ฆ๐น Laurenz Holcik
Free registration: cassyni.com/s/mvif-45
See you in January!
The Congress Attendance Aid (CAA) Grant is offered by ESEB to promote equal participation, diversity, and accessibility @empseb31.bsky.social June 2025, Oberwiesenthal, Germany
For more information and to apply click here: eseb.org/prizes-fundi...
A great piece below about science and art. And a great anecdote in the comments by @annfinkbeiner.bsky.social. Both ring pretty true to me.
A picture of a frog on a leaf with the SICB and Skype a Scientist logos on the bottom right with the following words on top: "Call for Artists!" Learn about the latest animal research adn create art inspired by the science at the SICB meeting in Portland, OR. Deadline to apply: dec 12, Project dates Jan 3-7, Stipend $1000"
ARTISTS!
I need your help!
In collab. w/the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology, I'm organizing a group of artists to come to our Jan. meeting! We're looking for artists to create based on what they learn at the conference. $1000 stipend.
Application is V short! forms.gle/ah1i8KwNJinZ...
Text: Society for the Study of Evolution SSE Presidents' Award for Outstanding Dissertation Paper, Deadline January 30. Recent covers of Evolution Letters and Evolution.
Did you publish part of your PhD work in @journal-evo.bsky.social or @evolletters.bsky.social this year? Submit your paper for the SSE Presidentsโ Award! Up to two recipients will each present an award talk during the virtual portion of #Evol2026 in May. Deadline: January 30. shorturl.at/CnVo6
A single human skull lies on the overgrown floor. It has many faces, eyes, noses, repeating in a fractal pattern. From the cracks in the bone, a small fractal flower emerges. The water behind swirls in shimmering patterns.
A picture taken from the floor of a hospital room. In the foreground, a person lies on the floor. Behind its head, their spinal cord, brain and eyes tumble outside, appearing to slither like a snake.
In the far distance, way behind the mountains, a face that is too large to comprehend looks back at you, eyes wide open.
A large 747 aircraft flies low close to a runway on a foggy day. The plane is completely dilapidated, with a missing cockpit area, several large holes in the fuselage and destroyed motors. It is surrounded by a coat of black smoke.
Today is my birthday! ๐
If you like my work and want to make my day, I only ask that you share my art and stories with someone who might enjoy them :)
Or trick your gullible friend for a minute. That's also a good one.
Please apply for this, and/or encourage your mentees and peers to do so!
WE FOUND IT! We trekked day and night through tiger-patrolled Sumatran rainforests accessible only under permit for this: Rafflesia hasseltii. Few people have ever seen this flower, and we watched it open by night. Magic.
