LATEST NEWS

The 2025 Evolution meeting, the joint meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists, will be held in two parts: a virtual portion on May 29-30, and an in-person portion on June 20-24 in Athens, GA, USA. 

SSE Council invites proposals for two sponsored symposia at the in-person meeting, and one at the virtual meeting. Symposia should highlight new topics, provide new perspectives, and/or generate new syntheses. Each in-person symposium will consist of two 75 minute sessions separated by a coffee break; the virtual symposium schedule will likely be the same or very similar. Applicants have the option to indicate whether they are willing to host their symposium in-person only, virtual only, or either.

SSE Council seriously considers the diversity of participants as a criterion for symposium funding. Symposium organizers are expected to take into account gender, seniority, nationality, and other axes of diversity traditionally underrepresented in Society symposia, and to describe their efforts to do so in the proposal. 

The Society provides travel support for organizers and participants in sponsored in-person symposia, up to $7000 USD per symposium. SSE will accept requests for additional funds for dependent care costs if this would allow a speaker to accept an invitation to speak in a sponsored symposium. For the virtual symposium, costs of speaker and organizer virtual-only registration will be covered, if necessary (those attending the in-person meeting get virtual registration included so do not need an extra virtual-only registration).

Deadline: January 6, 2025. Applicants will be notified by the end of January.

Learn more about how to submit a proposal here.

The Evolution editorial team seeks Associate Editors to serve three-year terms beginning January 2025. Associate Editors receive free membership in SSE for the duration of their term and free registration for the annual Evolution meeting.

We strongly encourage nominations and self-nominations of individuals who represent the full diversity of the evolutionary biology community, including (but not limited to) all aspects of identity and background, types of institution, geographic location, or scientific approach. 

To indicate your interest, provide your affiliation, research interests, and contact information in this short form.

Deadline: October 31

The American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists announce the call for nominations for the ASN/SSE/SSB Inclusiveness, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Award. The IDEA Award will be given to a person at any career stage who has strengthened the ecology and evolutionary biology community by promoting inclusiveness and diversity in our fields. The award can also be presented to a group. The recipient(s) will be invited to present a plenary lecture at the annual Evolution meeting. Each recipient will also receive a plaque and a $1000 honorarium (shared among recipients if more than one). 

Learn more and submit a nomination. Deadline: October 25, 2024

Join the field gear and clothing swap at Evolution 2024!

One barrier to entry for new evolutionary biologists can be the cost of field clothing and gear. To help reduce these barriers, the society Diversity Committees are hosting a field clothing and gear swap!

If you have field gear or clothes in good condition that you no longer use, and you think someone else could make use of them, please bring them to the in-person portion of the 2024 Evolution meeting in Montreal! These items could be clothing, tents, camp stoves, headlamps, camp chairs, binoculars, compasses, shovels, butterfly nets, or anything that could help a fellow field researcher.

There will be bins set up at the Tri-Society DEI booth, and people are welcome to come by anytime to grab something that may be of interest. Used clothing and gear in decent shape will happily be accepted, but if you’re feeling extra generous, we also welcome donations of new items. Any gear that has been in contact with plants and/or soil should be fully sterilized. See you in Montreal!

2024 Recipient
Congratulations to the 2024 recipient, Dr. Samarth Mathur, for his paper, “An evolutionary perspective on genetic load in small, isolated populations as informed by whole genome resequencing and forward-time simulations.” Read more about Dr. Mathur's paper.

2024 Honorable Mention
Congratulations also to this year’s Honorable Mention, Dr. Robin Costello, for her paper, “Multilevel selection on social network traits differs between sexes in experimental populations of forked fungus beetles.” Read more about Dr. Costello's paper.

Who are your evolutionary biology heroes? Who do you know whose conceptual advances, impactful publications, outreach and education efforts, mentorship and training, service to the community, or diversity and inclusion work has contributed to the evolutionary biology field and community? Maybe it’s you! Consider nominating yourself or someone else for the SSE Lifetime Achievement Award. Nominators will be asked to complete a short form describing the nominee’s contributions to the field and community. A detailed nomination letter is not required for the initial nomination. Learn more and submit your nomination by September 30!

Congratulations to the recipient of the 2024 Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation, Mackenzie Urquhart-Cronish! Mackenzie presented “Testing the influence of historical range expansion on contemporary mating system evolution.”

We are also pleased to announce two Honorable Mentions this year: Yuki Haba, who presented “Origin of the London Underground mosquito, Culex pipiens bioform molestus”, and Michelle McCauley, who presented “A pluralistic approach to sex: increased mutation rate and a coevolving parasite maintain outcrossing.”

Thank you to all of our Hamilton finalists, who presented 15 outstanding talks in the Hamilton Symposium during the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting. These talks will be available to all meeting registrants later this year.

The SSE International Committee invites applications for the International Event Grants, which provide funding for international symposia, workshops, courses, and other events within the field of evolutionary biology, including virtual events. Our priority is to support events that benefit emerging communities in the field of evolutionary biology. The diversity of participants and invited speakers will be considered as a criterion for selection. 

Learn more and apply by September 15, 2024.

Congratulations to the finalists for the 2024 Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation! This year’s finalists are: Chris Blake, McCall Calvert, Sylvia Durkin, Ana-Hermina Ghenu, Yuki Haba, Erik Iverson, Brian Lerch, Michelle McCauley, Ruthvik Pallagatti, Autumn Peterson, Rosalyn Price-Waldman, Nitin Ravikanthachari, Saubhik Sarkar, Emily Troyer, and Mackenzie Urquhart-Cronish. 

These finalists will present their work in the Hamilton Award Symposium during the virtual portion of the Evolution meeting on Thursday, June 27 from 1:30 to 7:30 pm Eastern (GMT-4). We hope you will join us for this series of excellent student talks!

The SSE GSAC is looking for three new council members to join our 2025 cohort. Details below!

The GSAC represents student and postdoc interests to the SSE Council and facilitates interaction among students and postdocs, and between students, postdocs, and mentors. Our goal is to be a source of information for students and postdocs during their graduate school career and as they make career transitions, and to provide an early-career perspective to the rest of the SSE council. For example, recently we took a leading role in putting on the GREG Seminar Series, in-person workshops and networking events during the annual Evolution meeting, virtual International Symposia Series, and the SSE Caregiver Award.

Eligibility & Requirements

GSAC members must be graduate students at the time of application and members of SSE. (Learn more about how to join.) Applicants should be organized, possess leadership skills, and be interested in working with SSE Council and members to contribute to the Society. Many more details about our activities throughout the year can be found in our GSAC blog post from the former SSE Community Blog. 

We strongly encourage those with non-traditional pathways to graduate school, those from non-R1 universities, and those from outside the United States to apply. GSAC is also committed to diverse representation, and we encourage applicants from historically excluded ethnic, gender, and socio-economic backgrounds. 

Duties

Students serve either a 2 or 3 year term, depending on whether they are chair of their cohort, and generally spend 5-10 hours per month on GSAC activities. Please see page 25 in the Officers Handbook for more details about requirements and current roles. 

How to Apply

To apply, please submit the following to GSAC@evolutionsociety.org by August 30th, 2024 (any time zone):

 (1) A one page statement of interest, addressing: 

• The ideas you would like to bring to GSAC 


• Your experience with leadership, organization and/or communications 


• Your interest in the Society for the Study of Evolution and motivation for joining GSAC


• How you will contribute to the diversity of perspectives needed to represent the diverse student/postdoc body of SSE  


• Any interactions you have had with SSE, such as attending SSE meetings, events, or work on other SSE committees, if applicable


• That you are a current member of SSE

 (2) A copy of your CV

We look forward to reading your applications, and please contact us at gsac@evolutionsociety.org if you have any questions about this process.