@molecologist at #Evol2013: The talks we'll be sure to see

Paintbrush on Peruvian Ridgeline Trail - Snowbird Utah

Tomorrow evening, the Evolution meetings will get underway in Snowbird, a Utah mountain resort near Salt Lake City. Many of our contributors are going to be there, and presenting their latest work—but what about the talks we’re excited to see?
Tim: Rowan Barrett’s Dobzhansky Prize talk will be good – I’m interested to hear where he’s done since leaving UBC: “The genomics of adaptation to new environments.”
Kim: I’m definitely going to Graham Coop’s: “The coalescent with soft sweeps.”
Mark: Here is my selection: “Rapid loss of migratory behavior and physiology associated with a songbird’s recent colonization of an urban habitat: natural selection or ‘non-random drift’?” I am hoping the answer is natural selection, but I guess we will have to wait and see …
Holly: As far as “must-see” talks, I’ll have to root for iEvoBio here since I’m on the organizing committee – we’ve worked hard to line up great program focused on “big data” and the Software Bazaar is always a good chance to test out some new tools and talk with the developers. iEvoBio is much smaller than Evolution too (typically ~150 people), which makes for a good atmosphere to mix and mingle.
Jeremy: I’m excited to see Sebastian Renault’s talk “Parallel genomic evolution but not parallel speciation in annual sunflowers” — I’m not aware of any other genome-scale datasets brought to bear on multiple parallel instances of ecological divergence and/or speciation.

About Jeremy Yoder

Jeremy B. Yoder is an Associate Professor of Biology at California State University Northridge, studying the evolution and coevolution of interacting species, especially mutualists. He is a collaborator with the Joshua Tree Genome Project and the Queer in STEM study of LGBTQ experiences in scientific careers. He has written for the website of Scientific American, the LA Review of Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Awl, and Slate.
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