Nathalie giving her talk

The group was well represented at the 2016 Euro Evo Devo meeting in a beautiful and sunny Uppsala. Nathalie gave a talk on the role of transposable elements in the Anolis lizard radiation, and Antonio presented results from his PhD thesis, which reveal how some turtles evolved the ability to withdraw their heads into the shell. Both talks were great and stimulated a lot of discussion.

Nathalie and Antonio also organised a fantastic symposium on plasticity and evolution, with Arkhat Abzhanov and Armin Moczek among the speakers. Definitely one of the highlights of the meeting! Tobias did not really contribute anything, but he made some new friends and learnt a lot in symposia and at the pub.

Thanks to Graham Budd and his team for great organisation and entertainment!

The Mediterranean Lizards meeting this year was held in Limassol, Cyprus. Tobias gave one of the plenaries, covering our ongoing study of the causes and consequences of hybridization in wall lizards. Sozos presented his recent Molecular Ecology paper on genetic diversity and inbreeding depression in non-native lizard populations in England, and Nathalie explained the developmental genetics of how wall lizard embryos have adapted to the cold climate they encounter on the British Isles.

Little Anolis equestris baby

Back in Lund the Anolis baby boom continues. With twelve species breeding, Nathalie and Hanna are busier than ever feeding, checking for eggs, and taking measurements. Up in the Pyrenees, Antonio and Bea have discovered what must be one of the best views from any field station, and in the Daphnia room Reinder and Alex are following the fate of hundreds of water fleas trying to understand how mothers make their kids locally adapted… And Yang? Well, he just got the wall lizard sequence data back so I guess we will not see him in a while!

Tobias has been promoted to Professor of Evolutionary Biology! The whole group congratulates Tobias for reaching this milestone, we know you are just in the beginning of an excellent career :-)!

Some cake to celebrate…

Are you interested in the relationship between developmental plasticity, maternal effects and evolution? If you also have a strong interest in evolutionary theory and a background in ecology you should consider applying. The details on the position and how to apply can be found here. For informal inquiries, please email Tobias.

The Golden PEG is a biannual event at Lund University to celebrate research in ecology and evolution. From lifetime achievement awardee Joel Brown at UI Chicago we learnt how evolutionary ecology can help us battle cancer. Joel’s work is an excellent example of how to constructive it can be to apply evolutionary perspectives to medicine. The Up-and-Coming award went to Bram Kuijper from the University of Exeter and UCL. Bram’s talk nicely illustrated his models of how maternal effects can influence adaptation to novel environments. Our guest of honour, Olof Leimar from Stockholm University, put Joel’s and Bram’s research in perspective and the rest of the day was filled with talks by LU biologists. A very stimulating day was rounded off with an excellent, and fun, dinner at Mat & Destillat. Thanks to Per, Jörgen and the rest of the organisers for a great meeting!

Speakers and organizers of the Golden PEG Symposium.