LATEST NEWS

President Donald J Trump
Washington, DC

Members of the US Congress
Washington, DC

February 5, 2025

RE: Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender

Dear President Trump and Members of the US Congress,

As scientists, we write to express our concerns about the Executive Order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”. That Order states first, that “there are two sexes…[which] are not changeable”. The Order goes on to state that sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce. These statements are contradicted by extensive scientific evidence.

Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex. Accordingly, sex (and gendered expression) is not a binary trait. While some aspects of sex are bimodal, variation along the continuum of male to female is well documented in humans through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Beyond the incorrect claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genetic composition at conception does not define one's identity. Rather, sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.

We note that you state that “Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale and trust in the government itself”. We agree with this statement. However, the claim that the definition of sex and the exclusion of gender identity is based on the best available science is false. Our three scientific societies represent over 3500 scientists, many of whom are experts on the variability that is found in sexual expression throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. More information explaining why sex lies along a continuum can be found here. If you wish to speak to one of our scientists, please contact any of the societies listed below.

Carol Boggs, PhD
President
Society for the Study of Evolution
president@evolutionsociety.org

Daniel Bolnick, PhD
President
American Society of Naturalists

Jessica Ware, PhD
President
Society of Systematic Biologists
president@systematicbiologists.org

Congratulations to the 2024 recipients of the Rosemary Grant Advanced Awards! These grants are part of the Graduate Research Excellence Grants (GREG) program, and provide up to $3,500 USD to students in the later stages of their PhD work. The 2024 recipients are: Audrey Arner, Denis Calandriello Calio, Ridhi Chandarana Rajesh, Alec Chiono, Tristram Dodge, Claire Evensen, Anjali Gupta, Nadia Haghani, Emily Kerns, Jill Love, and Ella Martin.

The W. D. Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation will be given to a current or very recent graduate student who presents an outstanding talk based on their graduate work at the annual Evolution meeting. Finalists will present their talks during the live-streamed Hamilton Award symposium during the virtual part of the meeting May 29-30. The application to become a Hamilton award finalist will be part of registration for the virtual meeting. Registration is expected to open in February. Learn more and submit your talk by April 15!

The SSE Caregiver Award is meant to assist members who have additional needs and responsibilities that can inhibit participation at the annual Evolution meeting. This award provides up to $500 to SSE members that need assistance in covering caregiver costs while attending the annual Evolution meeting in person or virtually. A "caregiver" is broadly defined and includes people caring for children or dependent adults (including adult children with a disability or elderly relatives), and people in need of personal assistance. This award can be spent as the awardee wishes to facilitate attendance. Learn more and apply by March 15!

The SSE Public Policy Committee invites SSE members to apply for funds to attend the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) 2025 Congressional Visits Day. The event will take place in Washington, DC and includes a free half-day training session on April 29 and meetings with lawmakers on April 30. There is also the option to also attend the Communications Boot Camp for Scientists on April 28-29. 

SSE members at all career stages who are interested in communicating the importance of federal investments in scientific research and education to lawmakers are encouraged to apply. Funding can be used to cover the cost of the Communications Boot Camp and contribute toward travel and lodging. 

SSE members interested in using these funds for other advocacy opportunities are also welcome to apply. Email policy@evolutionsociety.org for more information.

Learn more and apply by February 17, 2025.

Congratulations to the recipient of the 2024 IDEA Award, Dr. Jeremy Yoder! 

The Inclusiveness, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Award is presented by the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Society of Systematic Biologists. Dr. Yoder was selected for his foundational work recognizing, celebrating, and promoting the inclusion of LGBTQ+ professionals in STEM fields. In 2013, he spearheaded a large-scale study with the nonprofit Out to Innovate to survey more than 1,400 LGBTQA researchers around the world about their experiences in STEM fields. This work produced three papers which together have been cited almost 300 times, have inspired new projects and research, and are used as educational resources. Yoder has presented seminars on inclusion on LGBTQ inclusion and experiences in STEM, and served on panels to review policies for the advancement of LGBTQ+ people in STEM careers. In 2024, he spoke about his career studying Joshua trees in the Story Collider event at the annual Evolution meeting, where he previously helped organize LGBTQ+ meetups and mixers for several years. Learn more about his work on his lab website.

Dr. Yoder will present his work during the IDEA Award Plenary at the in-person portion of the Evolution 2025 meeting in Athens, GA in June.

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is now accepting proposals for the Small Grants Program for Local and Regional Outreach Promoting the Understanding of Evolutionary Biology. 

These grants provide support for local and regional educational outreach activities to take place during 2025. Examples of past outreach activities have included public lectures, exhibits, student competitions, and professional development events for teachers.

Grants of up to $1000 USD will be awarded. Applicants must be members of SSE. 

Learn more and apply by  March 1, 2025. 

Applications are now open for the 2025 International Travel Stipends, which provide funding to attend the Evolution 2025 meeting or the ESEB 2025 Congress in person. Recipients receive meeting registration and funds for transportation to the conference, meals, and lodging. All career stages are eligible, and preference will be given to students and early-career researchers. 

Check your eligibility and apply by January 31.

The SSE International Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 International Event Grants! The goal of these grants is to foster communication and collaboration between scientists from different countries by sponsoring international symposia, workshops, courses, and other events within the field of evolutionary biology. 

2024 Recipients:

Event: Meeting on the Origins and Evolution of Multicellularity Across the Tree of Life

Organizers: Victoria Shabardina (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona, Spain —IBE, CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain), Marta Álvarez-Presas (IBE), Koryu Kin (Juntendo University, Japan), Guifré Torruella (IBE), Aurora Nedelcu (University of New Brunswick, Canada), Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (IBE)
Dates: October 9-11, 2025
Location: Barcelona, Spain


Event: Evolutionary Genomics Workshop – Colombia 2024

Organizers: Catalina Palacios (SELVA: Research for the conservation in the neotropics, Colombia), Daniel Cadena (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), Camila Gómez (SELVA: Research for the conservation in the neotropics, Colombia), Leonardo Campagna (Cornell University, USA)
Dates: Late 2024 (exact dates TBD)
Location: Bogotá, Santa Marta, and Chiquinquirá, Colombia


Event: RADcamp-Latin America 2025: Robust and reproducible library preparation, sequencing, assembly, and analysis of RADseq datasets

Organizers: RADCamp workshop team (USA) and CoreLab Genomics team (Tecnológico de Monterrey, México)
Dates: July 14-21, 2025
Location: Monterrey, México


Event: Fifth International Southeast Asian Bat Conference (SEABCO 2024)

Organizers: Long Vu (Center for Biodiversity Conservation and Endangered Species—CBES) and Laurel Yohe (UNC Charlotte, USA)
Dates: November 26-30, 2024
Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Applications are now open for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants (GREG) - R. C. Lewontin Early Awards, which provide up to $2,500 USD in research funds for students in the early stages of their PhD or Master’s programs. Applicants must be members of SSE. Full eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, and proposal instructions are available here. 

Deadline: February 19

The SSE Diversity Committee is seeking new members for 2025! The DC works to support members from all backgrounds through 1) broadening representation to the SSE Executive Council, 2) pursuing initiatives that support historically excluded groups, and 3) creating an inclusive, accessible environment at the annual Evolution meeting and in evolutionary biology in general. 

Learn more and submit your application by December 15. 

The SSE Education and Outreach Committee is pleased to announce the call for applications for the 2025 T. H. Huxley award, named in honor of Darwin's very public supporter, which recognizes and promotes the development of high-quality evolution education resources. If you have an interesting project or educational activity to share, consider applying for this award. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to apply. 

This award provides funding for an SSE member to present evolution education resources at an education-focused session or conference approved by the Huxley Committee (e.g., education session at the annual Evolution meeting or the annual National Association of Biology Teachers conference).

Applications are due February 3, 2025. Learn more and apply here.

Have you had part of your dissertation published in Evolution or Evolution Letters this year? Consider submitting it for the SSE President’s Award for Outstanding Dissertation Paper. Previously only for papers in Evolution, this award now may also recognize papers published in Evolution Letters. 

Learn more and submit your nomination by January 31.

SSE is now accepting nominations for the Dobzhansky Prize to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding early-career evolutionary biologist. 

We seek nominees working in all areas of evolutionary biology, on any taxonomic group/system, using empirical and/or theoretical approaches. We hope the pool of nominees will reflect the many axes and components of diversity in the evolutionary biology community. We are specifically looking for candidates who take creative approaches to answering pressing questions in evolutionary biology. We welcome nominations of researchers around the globe.

The Dobzhansky Prize recipient presents the Dobzhansky Prize plenary at the annual Evolution meeting. The prize is accompanied by a 5,000 USD award. 

Submit your nomination by December 1, 2024. 

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.

The Evolution Code of Conduct commtitee is recruiting new EvoAllies for the Evolution meetings as part of our Safe Evolution initiative. The goal of the program is to improve the climate at the meetings, making them more welcoming for everyone. It is not enforcement (we have a safety officer to investigate and sanctioning committee to put in place any sanctions if warranted), but rather to help de-escalate situations, direct people to resources to help them, and to identify any problems.

People who sign up and are selected must attend a two hour online training on June 11, at 11 am US Eastern time (3 pm UTC, 8 am US Pacific) by members of the UT CLIMBS team and members of the Code of Conduct Committee.

We want to recruit people with a variety of life experiences, perspectives, and career stages. Our goal is to make people feel safe at the meeting; to that end, if you are facing or have faced questions about your possible misconduct, or have other reasons why your selection would be controversial, we ask that you do not sign up.

Applications will be evaluated by a subset of members of the Code of Conduct Committee and current EvoAllies. Applications close June 7 at 5 pm US Eastern time; chosen applicants will be notified by June 10 at noon US Eastern time. 

Submit your application here by June 7 at 5 pm Eastern.