New centre & Uppsala ahoi

Groundbreaking news since the last entry:
we're now part of the 'Evolution & Ecology Research Centre' within BEES and the first new appointment was that of Russell Bonduriansky as a lecturer in the new centre.
Visit his new webspace at: http://www.bonduriansky.net/

Some of us are going to ESEB in Uppsala next week and it will be good to catch up with everybody there.

Visitor from Uppsala

Johanna Rönn is visiting the lab. Johanna is a member of Alexeis former lab group at Uppsala and she'll be doing some work on crickets while she is here.

Conference of the Australasian Evolution Society at UNSW

 The next meeting of the Australasian Evolution Society will be held at the University of New South Wales in Sydney from the evening of Tuesday 12th June to the night of Friday 15th June 2007.

Call for registration and papers has started!

Our plenary speakers will be:

· Lindell Bromham (Australian National University)
· Scott V. Edwards (Harvard University)
· Paul B. Rainey (The University of Auckland)
· Michael Ruse (Florida State University)

For more details go to
http://aes.eriophora.com.au/events/2ndannouncement.htm

Prof. Marion Petrie visits the lab on the 9/1/2007

First guest in 2007 will be Marion Petrie, who is Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK.

Intro to modelling in R

http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker/emdbook/index.html

Chad Brassil: "Evolution in ecological models: parasitoid behavior to the tropical diversity gradient" (Department talk)

Our visitor Chad Brassil from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln will give a seminar in BEES today:

"Evolution in ecological models: parasitoid behavior to the tropical diversity gradient"

1-2pm, Room 456
16/11/2006

Quantitative genetics links

Hi,
I came across this comprehensive set of lectures on quantitative genetics:

http://www.aps.uoguelph.ca/~lrs/Animalz/

Enjoy! Felix

Journal club 17/10/06

Felix will talk about:

N.G. PRASAD and MALLIKARJUN N. SHAKARAD

Genetic correlations: transient truths of adaptive evolution

Journal of Genetics 2004 83(1): 4-6.

Congratulations on Grant Success

Congratulations to Sarah Pryke, Alexei Maklakov and Simon Lailvaux on their 2007 APD Fellowships and Discovery Grants, and to Erik Postma and Andy Russell on their Discovery Grant success.

Journal club at 2pm, on TUESDAY, 19/9

Alexei will talk about:

Carel ten Cate, Machteld N. Verzijden, and Eric Etman.

Sexual Imprinting Can Induce Sexual Preferences for Exaggerated Parental Traits

Current Biology 2006 16: 1128-1132.

Current Biology: Special Issue on SEX

Hi,

for everybody who haven't come across it yet:
http://www.current-biology.com/misc/?page=misc5
(Volume 16, Issue 17 , 5 September 2006)

Felix

Ageing mailing list

Hi,

I just came across this mailing list about ageing, it may be worth checking out:

http://www.bio.net/biomail/listinfo/ageing

Have fun with it,
Felix

Journal club 19/7/2006

Kate will talk about:
Female fitness declines with increasing female density but not male harassment in the western mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis.
Chad C. Smith and R. Craig Sargent. Animal Behaviour, 71(2), 2006, pp. 401-407.

Top five science blogs

Unfortunately we didn't make it into the top 5...

"Weblogs written by scientists are relatively rare, but some of them are proving popular. Out of 46.7 million blogs indexed by the Technorati blog search engine, five scientists' sites make it into the top 3,500. Declan Butler asks the winners about the reasons for their success."

See news @ nature.com for the winners

Labmeeting 10/7/2006

In this weeks' labmeeting Mark Kirkpatrick will talk about:

"Genetical principal components and fun traits"

Journal club

For this weeks journal club, Nori picked:
Nancy Tyler Burley, 2006. AN EYE FOR DETAIL: SELECTIVE SEXUAL IMPRINTING IN ZEBRA FINCHES. Evolution 60: 1076–1085

Some bedtime reading

Check out this link to a set of lecture notes written by Bruce Walsh for a post graduate course on evolutionary genetics:
http://nitro.biosci.arizona.edu/workshops/Aarhus2006/notes.html

Journal Club

After last weeks experiment, we will again have a 'normal' journal club tomorrow (Wednesday at 4:00 in room 608). I realise it is a bit late, I hope you still find the time to read this one:

Phillips and Shine, 2006. An invasive species induces rapid adaptive change in a native predator: cane toads and black snakes in Australia. Proc. Roy. Soc. B. 273: 1545-1550

And some more...

Impressive new Impact Factors for BioMed Central's open-access journals

Eleven journals published by BioMed Central received their first Impact Factor this month. With nine journals in the top 10 of their 2005 Journal Citation Report category, and ten journals with a 2005 Impact Factor exceeding 3.00, BioMed Central's open access journals are confirmed as publishing high-quality, highly cited research.

Many journals in the BMC series also received their first Impact Factors this year. BMC Developmental Biology, with an Impact Factor of 5.41, is ranked at number six in the developmental biology field. BMC Structural Biology enters the Biophysics category at number eight, with an Impact Factor of 5.00. BMC Evolutionary Biology, with an Impact Factor of 4.45, is the 6th most highly cited journal in the Evolutionary Biology category. BMC Biotechnology (3.05), BMC Neuroscience (2.73), BMC Microbiology (2.18) and BMC Gastroenterology (1.46) also received their first Impact Factor.

Read more on the BioMed Central website

Additional info about open access journals

Here's one more, hot off the press, about the pros of the open access system:

Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles.
Gunther Eysenbach.
PLOS, 4(5), 2006, pp. 692-698.