Martijn Schenkel

Excerpt from a 1975 paper by Bruce Wallace which reads: "The relative ease with which homozygous mutant flies can be maintained in stock cultures fails to reflect the low survival values these same genotypes would exhibit were they to develop together with wild-type flies in a single culture bottle. In many respects an adult fly resembles the Dean of the Faculty at a university: the positions exists and needs filling; the creation of a dean does not require, however, the existence of faculty members with deanlike qualities because the position will be filled in any case."

Wonder if Bruce Wallace liked his dean.

From: B. Wallace (1975). Hard and soft selection revisited. Evolution 29:465-473.

Infection dynamics of endosymbionts that manipulate arthropod reproduction A large proportion of arthropod species are infected with endosymbionts, some of which selfishly alter host reproduction. The currently known forms of parasitic reproductive manipulations are male-ki...

New paper out at Biological Reviews!! 🥳🥳

"Infection dynamics of endosymbionts that manipulate arthropod reproduction"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.70024

A joint effort with Franziska Brenninger (now a postdoc ‪@unibe.ch‬) and @kokkonut.bsky.social‬. (1/5)

Perran Stott Ross (University of Melbourne): Evolutionary impacts of endosymbionts for pest and disease control Filip Husnik (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology): The fate of obligate endosymbionts: reduction, integration, or extinction Date: April 30, 2025. Time: 08:00 UTC

*SAVE THE DATE*

The next seminar of our Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation virtual lectures series will be on April 30.

Talks from Perran Stott Ross and Filip Husnik.

Please note the time!

Sign up and check out recordings of previous talks here internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com

Overview of meeting details for the next Internal Conflicts STN seminar by Perran Stott Ross and Filip Husnik.

Join us tomorrow at 8:00 UTC (10:00 CEST) for the next Internal Conflicts STN seminar! Talks by Perran Stott Ross and Filip Husnik. For Zoom link + more info see internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/

Logo of the STN

The second workshop of our @eseb.bsky.social STN Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation will take place at the Princess Hotel, Barcelona on August 17, during the day before the ESEB congress evening reception.

More info and registration here: internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/workshop-ii/

Now available for preorder!

The Paradox of the Organism:
Adaptation and Internal Conflict, edited by me and Manus Patten, will be published by @harvardpress.bsky.social this fall.

Cover coming soon.

INTERNAL CONFLICTS AND ORGANISMAL ADAPTATION ESEB Special Topic Network

Registration (free!) is now open for the second Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN workshop in Barcelona on August 17! Like our first workshop, it will feature contributed talks and group-based discussions on key themes. Info + registration: internalconflictsSTN.wordpress.com. [1/2]

The workshop will precede the ESEB 2025 conference, and will take place right next door to the conference venue to make it easier for ESEB attendants. Start your conference right with a deep dive into the world of internal conflicts! Space is limited so grab a spot while you can. [2/2]

INTERNAL CONFLICTS AND ORGANISMAL ADAPTATION ESEB Special Topic Network

Registration (free!) is now open for the second Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN workshop in Barcelona on August 17! Like our first workshop, it will feature contributed talks and group-based discussions on key themes. Info + registration: internalconflictsSTN.wordpress.com. [1/2]

Join us later today at the STN seminar! Talks by Elizabeth Ostrowski and Amy Boddy!

Join us next Thursday/Friday for another seminar of the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN! A late-night event for Europeans, and a great way to end the workday (for Americas timezones) or start one (for Asia/Oceania timezones). Details at internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com

Today!

Join us next Thursday/Friday for another seminar of the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN! A late-night event for Europeans, and a great way to end the workday (for Americas timezones) or start one (for Asia/Oceania timezones). Details at internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com

"Seminar 10 announcement featuring two speakers: Karl Grieshop (University of East Anglia) presenting on 'Dominance reversals and the maintenance of genetic variation,' and Reka Kelemen (ISTA) discussing 'Multi-modal action of a mouse meiotic driver, revealed by single nucleus sequencing.' The seminar is scheduled for February 12, 2025, at 14:00 UTC. Two headshot images of the speakers are included, with Karl Grieshop on the left and Reka Kelemen on the right.

Join for the 10th virtual seminar in the @eseb.bsky.social Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN!

Wednesday at 9am Eastern!
internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars-2/

Sorry news indeed, my condolences.

Thank you all for the suggestions, I compiled them all here for the time being (might try to make something more stable than a google doc later), in case it is useful for anyone else: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

In the meantime, I will keep editing with new resources and recommendations!

What can we learn about ageing by looking beyond sexually reproducing unitary organisms? Very excited that our symposium (w/ Dr. Margaux Bieuville, not on bsky) "Ageing outside of the box: insights from unusual and non-model species" was accepted @eseb2025.bsky.social! eseb2025.com/list-of-symp...

John Werren (University of Rochester): Cooperating on Conflict: Selfish Genetic Elements, Heritable Microbes, and Genetic Conflicts. Bengt Olle Bengtsson (Lund University): Decades of conflicts: A personal history.

*Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation*

Join us on Thursday, 9am Eastern, for a history special in our STN lecture series!

Jack Werren and Bengt Olle Bengtsson will reflect on their many years of working on genetic conflicts.

Our symposium will feature theoretical and empirical work on e.g. evolution in unusual genetic systems, the evolution of these systems themselves, and selfish genetic elements - and more! So please consider submitting your abstract to our symposium. Looking forward to seeing you in Barcelona! [2/2]

Happy to announce that ESEB 2025 will feature a symposium on the evolution in and of diverse genetic systems! See eseb2025.com/list-of-symp... for more info and the full list of accepted symposia (so many cool things happening!) [1/2]

Come join us for another Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation seminar, this week on Thursday at 14:00 UTC! See internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com for more info on the STN and the seminars.

Seminars Seminar 9 John Werren (University of Rochester): Cooperating on Conflict: Selfish Genetic Elements, Heritable Microbes, and Genetic Conflicts. Bengt O. Bengtsson (Lund University): Decade…

Join us next week Thursday at 14:00 UTC for another seminar of the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN! John Werren and Bengt Bengtsson will discuss the early days of studying internal conflicts and selfish genetic elements. See internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars for more info.

(to clarify, this is not necessarily the best of analyses, just curious to see how this held up across other places than the US. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about which countries count for which continents, so YMMV).

This gets even worse when we compare the same trend across other places. Some Friday afternoon fun. Oh, such are the joys of postdoc life...

Screenshot from website. The title of the talks are Michele Hays (Stanford University) : Learning to live with a killer: how coevolved Saccharomyces cerevisiae become toxin resistant Bryan Gitschlag (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory): Levels of conflicts: within cells and across tissues The screenshot also has photos of the two speakers.

Join us for the 8th seminar in the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation @eseb.bsky.social STN lecture series.

Talks from @bryangitschlag.bsky.social and Michele Hays.

Thursday December 12, 11am Eastern!

Heart cockle shells transmit sunlight to photosymbiotic algae using bundled fiber optic cables and condensing lenses - Nature Communications Some bivalves have evolved photosynthetic symbioses. Here, the authors show that heart cockles transmit light through their upper shell to internal photosynthetic symbionts, using mineral fiber optic ...

New paper out! We show that heart cockles use bundled fiber optic cables to transmit light through "skylights" in their shell for their photosynthetic algae. The skylights filter out harmful UV radiation. These coral analogues are cool critters!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Social life cycle of D. discoideum illustrating clone mixing. Life stages are not drawn to scale. Labels on the illustration read: 1) vegetative amoebas feed on bacteria, 2) when starving, amoebas aggregate to form multicellular mound, 3) mound matures into a motile slug and moves towards light, 4) during fruiting, most amoebas develop into spores, ~20% are sacrificed to form stalk, 5) spores disperse to new environments and hatch into vegetative amoebas, 6) by disproportionately investing in spores, cheater genotypes can outcompete cooperators.

The hidden cost of aggregation lies in the incompatibilities between cells with different genetic dialects
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by @jahanisrat.bsky.social, @treyjscott.bsky.social, @joanstrassmann.bsky.social, and David C Queller

A new platform, a new thread. Here's a thread explaining our recent work on #evolution in finite populations, now available ahead of print in @asn-amnat.bsky.social 🧬🧪