Yale Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

New Haven’s Worthington Hooker School is seeking judges for their 6-8th Grade Science Fair, which will take place next Friday, February 3. Judging will start at 8:30 a.m. and continue for about 3 hours. If you can volunteer at this event or for more information, please contact Sahar Usmani-Brown (email) or Mary Beth Decker (email).

A recent paper by Francesc Lopez-Giraldez and Jeffrey Townsend, PhyDesign: an online application for profiling phylogenetic informativeness, has earned the designation "Highly Accessed" in less than a month after its publication in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Suzanne Alonzo is recipient of 2011 Yale University Postdoctoral Mentoring Prize!

Kathleen Prudic and Antónia Monteiro discover that Bicyclus butterflies switch sex roles depending on larval/pupal rearing temperature and publish this research in Science on Jan 6, 2011.

Stephen Stearns, Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has been awarded the DeVane Medal for excellence in undergraduate teaching by the Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. This award will be bestowed at a ceremony on February 21, 2011 and is the only teaching prize at Yale that is decided exclusively by undergraduate students.

Vinod Saranathan is the recipient of the "Isaac Newton Postdoctoral Fellowship" from the Royal Society of London to go to two years to Oxford!

Prof. Jeffrey Townsend's recent research on the rate of loss of antibiotic resistance was featured in the New Haven Register and the Hartford Courant.

Announcement of Carl Zimmer's Science Writing Workshop

The Townsend Lab's recent paper, Multi-targeted priming for genome-wide gene expression assays, has earned the designation "Highly Accessed" in less than a month after its publication in BMC Genomics.

Dr. Wendy Clement Research: Plant Evolution & Systematics [pdf]

Research Opportunities for Undergraduates

Christen Bossu & Thomas Near have won the 2009 SSB Publisher's award for her paper: Bossu, C. M., and T. J. Near. 2009. Gene trees reveal repeated instances of mitochondrial DNA introgression in Orangethroat Darters (Percidae: Etheostoma). Systematic Biology 58:114-129.
Each year at the Evolution Meetings, the Society of Systematic Biologists presents the Publisher's Award for best student paper published in the Systematic Biology in the previous year. Congratulations!

Colors of Butterfly Wing Yield Clues to Light-Altering Structures
"Structure, function, and self-assembly of single network gyroid (I4132) photonic crystals in butterfly wing scales" Vinod Saranathan, and Richard O. Prum's work featured in PNAS

Günter Wagner elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Four months after it was published, Professor Stephen Stearns’ article on evolution in contemporary populations continues to draw attention. Professor Stearns was cited in the February 23, 2010 edition of the Wall Street Journal, page D1.

Yale Scientists First to Reveal Flamboyant Colors of a Dinosaur’s Feathers. See Richard O. Prum video.

Congratulations to Suzanne Alonzo, 2010 Recipient of the Graduate Mentor Award!

Genetic Analysis Gives Hope That Extinct Tortoise Species May Live Again.
Health News Digest, Jan 15, 2010
The Way of the Panda, Jan. 13, 2010

Professor Paul Turner was recently interviewed by science journalist Carl Zimmer, regarding his lab evolution experiments with RNA viruses to better understand how viruses emerge on new hosts. Click to hear this interview.

Jeffrey Townsend and Zheng Wang release a SciVee Video on the "Evolution of reproductive morphology in leaf endophytes"

Richard O. Prum, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology is one of two Yale faculty members named MacArthur Foundation Fellows for 2009. Read Article.

Jeffrey Townsend and Zhang Zhang release a SciVee Video on "Maximum-Likelihood Model Averaging To Profile Clustering of Site Types across Discrete Linear Sequences"

Rick Prum “Birds as Living Dinosaurs” - an iTunes Netcast in Yale Eline Newsletter.

"Wings, Horns, and Butterfly Eyespots: How Do Complex Traits Evolve?"
Antónia Monteiro, Ondrej Podlaha
Monteiro lab in Plos Biology journal

Carl Zimmer on “Evolving Darwin” TIME News - Health & Science

Stephen Smith mentioned in New York Times, Feb. 9: Crunching the Data for the Tree of Life.

American Naturalist : Erem Kazancıoğlu and Suzanne H. Alonzo

Paul Turner featured in New Scientist

Stephen Smith in current Science issue. Read article.

Vincent Lynch, Wagner E&EB Ph.D and PostDoc: “Resurrected genes from the extinct ancestors of mammals helped us find a change that promoted development of the uterus and placenta.” (credit Wagner/Yale) Read article.

Extinct May Not be Forever for Some Species – NYT / BBC / National Geographic / Science interview Gisella Caccone and Jeff Powell for PNAS. Article | PDF | Word | EurekAlert

Monteiro lab stars in Science Friday Video. View video here.

A new video game allows players to create their own evolving organism. Read article.

Leo Buss cited in OBBeC.com. Read article.

Rob Leclerc, Wagner Lab, new Nature author. Read article.

Fossil Feathers Preserve Evidence of Color, Say Yale Scientists. Read article.

New Member of Am. Acad. Arts & Sci. - Michael Donoghue, Evelyn Hutchison Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History and Professor of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Katy Prudic, PostDoc, Monteiro lab, has research featured in the Canadian version of NPR. The show is called "Quirks and Quarks". The podcast is available here.

Professor Antonia Monteiro's research on butterflies and PostDoc Patricia Brennan's research on duck behavior will be featured in the 2 part PBS Nature series "What females want" and "What males will do". Monteiro is in Part 1 and Brennan in Part 2 of the series scheduled for April 6 and 13th--check out your local PBS station for air times by following this link.

Günter Wagner Nature Paper

Evolutionary Medicine Symposium April 17. For information, go to: http://www.yale.edu/evomedsymposia

E&EB Senior Mary "Cassie" Stoddard wins prestigious Marshall Scholarship

Stearns Yale ITunes Interview for Bass
Writing Program - http://itunes.yale.edu/