LATEST NEWS

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. 

SSE Council is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. Ruth Shaw.

Dr. Shaw was selected for her fundamental empirical and conceptual contributions to evolutionary biology and her commitment to SSE. Dr. Shaw has developed foundational methods for statistical inferences about fitness in natural populations. She has implemented these methods in the field to assess fitness in natural populations, such as in The Echinacea Project, studying the long-lived Echinacea angustifolia to evaluate the consequences of habitat fragmentation in tallgrass prairie. Dr. Shaw has also advanced understanding of the fitness effects of de novo mutations, capacity for ongoing evolutionary adaptation, and geographic scale of adaptation in wild populations. Dr. Shaw has served in numerous roles in SSE since 1991, most recently as President in 2020.

Dr. Shaw will present the Lifetime Achievement Award talk at the virtual portion of the 2024 Evolution meeting on Friday, June 28 at 7:45 am Eastern (GMT-4). Visit the Evolution meeting website for the full program and to register.

SSE, ASN, ESEB, and SSB are teaming up with The Story Collider for a science storytelling show on July 28th as part of the in-person portion of the 2024 Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology (Evolution 2024)! The theme for this event is “Throughout the Distribution," and it will feature 5 stories from 5 different viewpoints that represent the diversity of experiences in evolutionary biology.

Requirements:

The only requirement is that the story must be about you. We’re seeking true stories about your personal experiences with science to be included in the show. These must be stories—not lectures—with a beginning, middle, and end in which you undergo a change. 

All you need at this point is the seed of an idea for your story. It can be about almost anything:

- Perseverance and obstacles overcome (whether professional or scientific)
- Expectations upended
- Finding community, belonging, or acceptance in biology
- Adventure and danger
- Having your perspective changed 
- Being in over your head or a rough day in the field
- Conquering fears
- Finding work/life balance
- Being inspired
- Standing up for yourself
- An important experiment
- Misadventure, love, or loss
- How you first fell in love with science
- How your work has affected your personal life 

Primarily, the producers will look for a strong story arc – a change that takes place in the storyteller from beginning to the end. The Story Collider producers will help you develop this idea into an eight-to ten-minute-long story. For further inspiration, you can listen to examples of our last Story Collider Event in 2019 on SoundCloud. 

How to apply:

If you’re interested, please email the Story Collider producers at stories@storycollider.org by May 17th, 2024 and include a short (1-2 paragraphs) summary of your story and “Evolution 2024" in the subject line. 

Deadline: May 17th, 2024

If selected, the Story Collider producers will help you develop this idea into an eight-to ten-minute-long story in the weeks leading up to the show. The storytellers will perform their stories at the Story Collider event at 7:00 pm on July 28th at the in-person portion of the Evolution 2024 meeting in Montreal.

This event is organized by the SSE Diversity Committee, the ESEB Equal Opportunities Committee, the ASN Diversity Committee, and the SSB DEI Committee. Email the SSE Diversity Committee (diversity [at] evolutionsociety.org) or Misha Gajewski, Story Collider Managing Producer (mishagajewski [at] storycollider.org) with any questions. We look forward to hearing your stories at Evolution 2024!

The SSE Nominating Committee invites nominations for five Council positions beginning January 2025: President Elect, North American Vice President, and three Councilors. Nominations are accepted throughout the year, but only nominations submitted by April 15 will be considered for the 2025 ballot. We welcome self nominations. Continue reading for descriptions of each position.

We are pleased to offer free registration for the virtual portion of the Evolution 2024 meeting (June 27-28) to SSE members from 152 countries and territories around the world. All members who joined through the Global Membership Assistance Program are eligible. Meeting registration codes will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Learn more and apply here.

Congratulations to our 2024 T. H. Huxley Award winner, Tim Hartelt! This award provides funding for an SSE member to present evolution education resources at an education-focused session or conference.

Tim Hartelt is a PhD student advised by Dr. Helge Martens in the Department of Biology Education at the University of Kassel in Germany. Hartelt was selected for his educational resource, "Metaconceptual Learning Activities for Promoting Metacognitive Awareness and Self-Regulation of Intuitive Thinking in Evolution Education." In the activities, students actively engage with their intuitive thinking to develop an appropriate understanding of evolution. Learn more about the activity here, and read a recent paper by Hartelt and colleagues here. As part of the award, Hartelt will receive funding to present his work at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in November.

Hear from 11 recipients of our R. C. Lewontin Early Awards in this weekly virtual seminar series organized by the Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC). Student speakers present their research in a seminar-style format on Mondays from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Eastern via Zoom. Our first speaker on March 4 will be Robin Waterman of Michigan State University. Join the seminar here. We hope to see you there!

Congratulations to the recipient of the 2023 IDEA Award, Dr. Corey Welch! 

Dr. Welch was selected for his wide range of work to broaden participation of students and professionals from diverse backgrounds in all areas of STEM. Using the latest research on student success and his training in vertebrate ecology and evolution, he established and now directs an award-winning undergraduate training program, the STEM Scholars Program at Iowa State University. During his work with the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), where he served on the board of directors for six years, Dr. Welch launched an ongoing mentoring program at the society’s annual meeting and has served as a facilitator for the Linton-Poodry SACNAS Leadership Institutes. In addition to this work, Dr. Welch has led more than 40 seminars and presentations, mainly at biology and EEB departments, on how to improve DEI in STEM. Most recently, Dr. Welch founded the Sharon Farr Welch Northern Cheyenne Tribal Scholarship program for students from his own Northern Cheyenne community to pursue higher education. 

Dr. Corey Welch will present his work during the IDEA Award Plenary at the in-person portion of the Evolution 2024 meeting in Montreal this July. This event will also be live-streamed for all meeting registrants.

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. For example, this award can be used (but is not limited) to:

- bring someone that is in your care to the Evolution meeting
- cover the cost of dependent care at home while you travel
- bring someone that is helping to care for you to the Evolution meeting
- cover the cost of dependent care while you attend virtually
- cover any extra accessibility costs associated with attending

Awardees can spend this money in whatever way will help alleviate the cost of caregiving. We anticipate up to 20 awards will be made available, depending on the number of applicants.

Deadline: March 15, 2024

The SSE Public Policy Committee will fund a limited number of SSE members to attend the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) 2024 Congressional Visits Day, which will take place in Washington, DC and includes a free half-day training session on April 16 and meetings with lawmakers on April 17. There is also the option to also attend the Communications Boot Camp for Scientists on April 15-16. 

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 about SSE membership and how to join, or check your current SSE membership status.   

Deadline: February 19, 2024

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 2023. 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, 2024.