Symposia

tuesday 6/22 - ASN Vice-Presidential symposium: The Power of Sexual Selection
Sexual selection is known to play an important role in the evolution and diversity of what we observe in nature. Research on how sexual selection shapes organisms has focused primarily on “classic” sexually-selected traits, such as those involved in reproductive competition, mate attraction and mate choice. Yet, sexual selection, in combination with natural selection, has the potential to shape any aspect of the organism. This symposium highlights early career researchers whose work is expanding our understanding of the power of sexual selection to shape all aspects of the organism from brains to bodies to genomes.
Organizer: Susan Alonso
Speakers TBA
tuesday 6/22 - SSE at 75 years: continuity and change in evolutionary research
This symposium commemorates the 75th anniversary of SSE through a diversity of themes of long standing and continuing interest. For each of these topics current work is threaded through its historical context, as well as its significance in the present moment, with the goal of taking a critical view of the history of evolutionary biology, recognizing the work and ideas that came before us, as well as the ways in which our discipline is changing and should keep evolving.
Organizers: Ruth Shaw and María Rebolleda-Gomez
Speakers:
  • C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University "Pandemic perspectives on epistasis, evolvability, and the evolution of virulence"
  • Noah Whiteman, UC Berkeley "Adaptation by small steps and giant leaps: A tale of two toxins"
  • Martha Muñoz, Yale University "A multidimensional perspective on the role of behavior in evolution"
  • Susana M. Wadgymar, Davidson College "The current insights and future promises of evolutionary climate change research"
  • Amanda K. Gibson, Univ. Virginia "Disease and dispersal in a natural C. elegans-parasite interaction"
  • John Beatty, Univ. British Columbia "Chance Variation and the Evolutionary Synthesis: Dobzhansky, Simpson, Mayr, Stebbins"
Thursday 6/24 - asn symposium: the theory of evolution
Darwin’s 19th-century writings laid the foundations for modern studies of evolution, and theoretical developments in the mid-20th century fostered the Modern Synthesis. Since that time, a great deal of new biological knowledge has been generated, including details of the genetic code, lateral gene transfer and developmental constraints. Our improved understanding of these and many other phenomena have been working their way into evolutionary theory, changing it and improving its correspondence with evolution in nature. And while the study of evolution is thriving both as a basic science to understand the world and in its applications in agriculture, medicine, and public health, the broad scope of evolution—operating across genes, whole organisms, clades, and ecosystems—presents a significant challenge for researchers seeking to integrate abundant new data and content into a general theory of evolution. This symposium presents that framework and synthesis for the twenty-first century. The talks will address the current state of evolutionary theory across numerous fields.
Organizers: Sam Scheiner and David Mindell
Speakers:
  • Samuel Scheiner, National Science Foundation "The Theory of Evolution: A Conceptual Framework"
  • V. Betty Smocovitis, University of Florida "Historicizing the Synthesis"
  • Alan Love, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities "Situating Evolutionary Developmental Biology in Evolutionary Theory"
  • David Jablonski, University of Chicago "Macroevolutionary Theory"
  • Maria Orive, University of Kansas "The Evolution of Sex: A Theory of of Recombination"
  • Rosemary Gillespie, University of California - Berkeley "The Theory of Evolutionary Biogeography"
  • David Mindell, University of California - Berkeley "The Theory of Evolution: Growth and Outlook"
thursday 6/24 - SSE symposium: Using machine learning to understand the evolution of biodiversity
​The past decade has seen exponential growth of data and tremendous successes of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). While major technology companies are rethinking their strategies around AI, biology is only beginning to catch up with the revolution. Though the usage of ML is not new in the sciences, or even biology, the application of these approaches, and their modern algorithms, to better understand life on the planet is in its relative infancy. The major impediments to better understanding Earth’s biodiversity are time and resources. Machine learning can be used to establish a framework that speeds up the biodiversity discovery process, as well as untangle patterns of diversity, the genomic regions underlying those patterns, and the potential species, populations, or habitats in critical need of conservation.
Organizers: Chris A Hamilton and Marek L Borowiec
Speakers:
  • Megan L. Smith, Indiana University “The effects of selection on inferences of introgression with Machine Learning”
  • Sara Mathieson, Haverford College "Adaptive evolutionary inference across human populations using convolutional neural networks"
  • Shahan Derkarabetian, Harvard University "Inferring species limits and structure with machine learning algorithms"
  • Andrew Kern, University of Oregon "Deep learning prediction of geographic origin from individual genome sequences"
  • Rebecca B. Dikow & Alex White, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC "Museum collections, deep learning, and biogeography: a global case study of ferns"
  • Anahí Espíndola, Univ. of Maryland "Machine learning as a tool for conservation at different scales"
  • Anton Suvorov, UNC Chapell Hill "Exploring the potential of deep learning for faster and more accurate phylogenetic inference"
  • Briana Ezray & Drew Wham, Penn State University "Measuring perceptual distance of organismal color pattern using pre-trained neural networks"​
thursday 6/24 - ssb diversity, equity, and inclusion symposium: diversifying evolution
Format: talks that combine research and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practice, followed by roundtable panel discussion.
​Organizer: Jessica Ware
Speakers: 
  • ​Bryan Carstens, Ohio State University "Scientific Societies and the Publishing Ecosystem"
  • Gabriel Bernardello, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba - Museo Botanico "A South American naturalist in the 21st Century"
  • Lauren Esposito, California State Academy "Identity as a Pathway: Scorpion Evolution and Queer Advocacy"
  • Herve Sauquet, Royal Botanic Garden "Queering Flower Evolution"
  • Kory Evans, Rice University "The Evolution Mosaic of the Fish Skull: a Quest for Answers and Identity"
  • Chris Hamilton, University of Idaho "Understanding Aphonopelma Diversity across the Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands Hotspot by Integrating Western Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)"
  • Ambika Kamath, Colorado University, Boulder "Stronger Together: Lessons for DEI from Union Organizing"
friday 6/25 - SSE Education symposium: Tree Thinking: Have We Met the Challenge?
Organizer: Phil Gibson, K. Jenkins, Rich Kliman, Louise Mead
Speakers:
  • David Baum, University of Wisconsin "The importance of tree thinking"
  • Laura Novick, Vanderbilt University "A cognitive psychological perspective on tree-thinking difficulty"
  • Kristy Daniel, Texas State University "Seeing the forest and the trees: Assesing tree-thinking"
  • Phil Gibson, University of Oklahoma "Tools for teaching trees"
friday 6/25 - award symposia
SSB Mayr Award Symposium
Organizer: Liliana Dávalos SSE Hamilton Award Symposium
Organizer: Katy Heath ASN Young Investigator Prize
Organizer: Butch Brodie​
Speakers:
  • Benton Taylor, Harvard University "What really regulates symbiotic nitrogen fixation in terrestrial ecosystems?"
  • Ken Thompson, University of British Columbia "The evolutionary ecology of hybridization in threespine stickleback fish"
  • Tess Grainger, University of British Columbia "The ecological and evolutionary interplay between competition and climate"
  • Rebecca Batstone, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign "Evolution in a symbiotic world: the genomic basis of conflict and cooperation in experimentally-evolved and natural symbiont populations"
  • James T. Stroud, Washington University "Bridging the process-pattern divide in the radiation of biological diversity"
​Dobzhansky Prize 2020
Speaker: 
  • Jacqueline Sztepanacz, University of Toronto "Evolutionary limits: disentangling the roles of pleiotropy and selection"
Dobzhansky Prize 2021
  • ​Speaker: TBA
Evolution.meetings@gmail.com
Virtual Evolution 2021