Yasir Ahmed, Andrea Sweigart, and Allen Orr
Today we bid farewell to Orr Lab postdoc Andrea Sweigart, who is moving on to a new postdoctoral position in Lila Fishman’s lab at the University of Montana. At Montana, Andrea will return to her roots by reinitiating her work on the genetics of adaptation and reproductive isolation in Mimulus. We’re going to miss you Andrea!
The bioperl reading group has a new location. Tomorrow’s meeting discussing Ch. 4 Tisdall’s Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics will be held at 1PM in Hylan 303.
Editors Tara and Justin Ramsey have just released the 2010 issue of our departmental newsletter, The Open Reading Frame [pdf]. This issue features profiles of undergraduate and graduate students in our program, updates on the status of recent graduates, faculty highlights, and a travelogue about hunting lizards in Haiti.
Congratulations to all of our graduating seniors! Twenty one students graduated with a B.S. in ecology and evolutionary biology. The Ramsey Lab had a particularly successful graduating class, having hosted four of the five seniors earning degrees with distinction. Justin Budnik – who works in both the Ramsey and Fry labs – swept the departmental awards by earning both the Aymin Amin-Salem Memorial Fund Prize and the Donald R. Charles Memorial Prize. Several undergraduates from this year’s class are already preparing to join top-ranked graduate programs in ecology and evolutionary biology: Glor Lab undergraduates Seth Rudman and Ali Ossip-Klein are moving to the University of British Columbia and Indiana University, respectively. For more details on our graduating seniors, you can check out the latest issue of our departmental newsletter: The Open Reading Frame [pdf].
A relative of Julienne's study organism (Anolis lemurinus) eating a much larger relative of Yasir's study organism (a tabanid fly).
For this Friday’s EEB seminar we’ll be treated to research updates from two PhD students. Fourth year student Julienne Ng will discuss her work in the Glor Lab on “Dewlap color variation in Anolis distichus: a role in reproductive isolation?” Yasir Ahmed will follow Julienne with a talk on his work in the Orr Lab on “Speciation in the virilis Group of Drosophila.”
Another new summer group kicks off this week! The student led group will be doing a tour through Tisdall’s Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics. The first meeting is set for today at 1PM in 486A and will focus on chapter 1-3.
The student-led reading group taking on Dobzhansky’s Genetics and the Origin of Species meets again today at 3:30 in Hutchison 486A to discuss chapters 3 on “Mutation as a Basis for Race and Specific Differences”.
Next week, the joint Biology/Philosophy reading group will wrap up discussion of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini’s “What Darwin Got Wrong.” We’ll be discussing the final two chapters on Tuesday May 11th at 6PM at Java’s Cafe on Gibbs St., adjacent to the Eastman Theater. These chapters, which were written primarily by Fodor, are somewhat more engaging (though perhaps no more sensical) than the earlier chapters penned primarily by Piattelli-Palmarini.
This is the inaugural post of the PEEB’s new home on the web. The page is pretty bare right now, but we’re hoping to flesh it out with lots of new content in the coming weeks!