Evolution in Sweden 2023
January 10 @ 09:00 – January 12 @ 17:00 CET
Evolution in Sweden is a biannual meeting, which broadly gathers evolutionary biologists working in Sweden. The meeting was held in Uppsala 2014, Lund 2016, Stockholm 2018, and Gothenburg 2020. The host for 2023 is Evolutionary Biology Centre, at Uppsala University. The meeting is aimed to be a broad meeting on every aspect of evolutionary biology of all forms of life on Earth. However, please note that the meeting is restricted to scientists active in Swedish academic departments.
This year the Evolution in Sweden conference is organized together with the Evolution and Biodiversity research area from the Data-driven life science program (DDLS), part of a 12-year SEK 3.1 billion initiative from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Please find more information about the DDLS program here. We encourage researchers working with analysis of large data sets in the fields of evolution and biodiversity to attend.
Keynote speakers:
Luis-Miguel Chevin, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS Montpellier, France, Paul Hohenlohe, University of Idaho, USA and Tanja Schwander, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Registration:
Registration and check-in will open at 09:30 on Tuesday, January 10, followed by self-catered lunch. No registration fee, fika will be provided. Lunch, Dinner, and Hotel are not included in the registration.
Posters:
We ask you kindly to hang your poster during the registration, pins will be provided. Make sure to stand by your poster at the Poster session. The poster board area is 119×89 (excl frame), in standing format.
Lunches:
The lunches will be self-catered. There is a restaurant at EBC, Hassans, and restaurants close by, for instance, Blåsenhus or Segerstedthuset (see Google maps). There will be pub evenings (at your own expense) and an informal dinner on January 11.
Informal Conference dinner on January 11:
The registered participants have received a separate invitation to attend the informal dinner on January 11. Attendance is optional, and the cost is the participant’s responsibility. A Lebanese buffet (195 kr not including beverages or coffee) will be offered at Hassans at EBC. Follow the instructions in the invitation to register, and remember to pay the restaurant in advance using Swish.
Conference Pub and Hotel:
The Conference Pub, on January 10, is Bishop Arms. Keynote speakers are staying at the Elite Hotel Academia. We have not pre-negotiated any hotel rooms for the participants.
Conference book:
A link to the Conference book is sent to all registered participants, with a detailed program, information about the keynote speakers, abstracts, and a List of participants.
Cancellation of attendance:
email events@SciLifeLab.se
Brief program
The detailed program is published in the Conference Abstract book, and emailed to all participants.
January 10
09:30 | 12:00 | On-site registration opens outside Friessalen and Ekmansalen, EBC |
12:00 | Lunch (self-catered) | |
12:45 | Welcome (parallel in Fries and Ekman) | |
13:00 | Keynote: (parallel in Fries and Ekman) Adaptive capacity in wildlife populations: a case study of a unique disease Paul A. Hohenlohe, University of Idaho, USA | |
14:00 | 17:00 | Two parallel afternoon sessions (Friessalen and Ekmansalen, EBC) with coffee at 15:15-15:45 |
18:00 | Conference pub; Bishop Arms (map) |
January 11
09:00 | 12:00 | Two parallel morning sessions (Friessalen and Ekmansalen, EBC) with coffee at 10:15-10:45 |
12:00 | Lunch (self-catered) | |
13:30 | Keynote: (parallel in Fries and Ekman) Evolution and consequences of parthenogenesis: Insights from stick insects Tanja Schwander, University of Lausanne, Switzerland | |
14:30 | 17:30 | Two parallel afternoon sessions (Friessalen and Ekmansalen, EBC) with coffee at 15:45-16:15 |
17:30 | Poster session, cash bar on 2nd floor. | |
19:15 | Dinner buffet at Hassans, EBC (more information sent to the Conference participants) | |
23:00 | EBC closes, and everyone has to leave the Campus building for security reasons. |
January 12
09:00 | 12:00 | Two parallel morning sessions incl. DDLS (Friessalen and Ekmansalen, EBC) with coffee at 10:15-10:45 |
12:00 | Lunch (self-catered) | |
13:30 | Keynote: (parallel in Fries and Ekman) Predictability of ecology and evolution in randomly fluctuating environments Luis-Miguel Chevin, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS Montpellier, France | |
14:30 | Final remarks, future meeting thoughts | |
15:00 | Meeting closes |
Adaptive capacity in wildlife populations: a case study of a unique disease
Wildlife populations face threats from climate change, invasive species, habitat modification, disease, and other factors. Evolutionary biology and genomics provide powerful tools for assessing the capacity of populations to adapt and persist. As a case study for adaptive capacity, I focus on a unique disease that threatens the persistence of Tasmanian devils. Devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) is a transmissible cancer that has spread across the species range. Using genomic techniques, we have found evidence of rapid evolution in response to DFTD as well as a genetic basis for disease-related phenotypes. Recently a second independently derived transmissible cancer was discovered in devils, raising the possibility that this is a recurrent selective force. We have found widespread evidence of both historical and contemporary selection in the devil genome, but no evidence that genes currently responding to DFTD were under recurrent selection in the past. These results help us assess the capacity of devil populations to adapt to threats, including transmissible cancers, and can help guide the management of both wild and captive devil populations.
Bio
Paul A. Hohenlohe is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Idaho, USA. He earned his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington and worked as a conservation biologist for the U.S. federal government. During his postdoctoral work at the University of Oregon, he was part of the team that developed RAD sequencing as a tool for population genomics. His current research program focuses on evolutionary genetics and genomics with applications to conservation of biodiversity, across a wide range of plant and animal taxa. He is also the director of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology graduate degree program at UI.
Evolution and consequences of parthenogenesis: Insights from stick insects
Parthenogenesis is predicted to have many evolutionary consequences, since gamete production and the restoration of somatic ploidy levels via fertilization no longer take place, and because male phenotypes are not exposed to selection. The empirical evidence for most predictions remains however scarce, largely because in case studies of isolated parthenogenetic species, putative effects of parthenogenesis are confounded with species specific patterns. To fill this knowledge gap, we study independently evolved asexual arthropod species and their sexual relatives. I will discuss the insights we developed from genome and
transcriptome comparisons of sexual and asexual stick insect species as well from comparisons across new and previously published genomes of parthenogenetic animals.
Bio
Tanja Schwander earned her PhD at the University of Lausanne 2007 and then got postdoctoral and independent researcher fellowships at Simon Fraser University (CA), University of Groningen (NL) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (DE). Tanja returned to Lausanne with a SNSF starting grant in 2013 and got a tenure track position there in 2014. Since 2018, Tanja is an associate professor at University of Lausanne.
Predictability of ecology and evolution in randomly fluctuating environments
Most natural environments exhibit some component of random variation or noise, which can only be predicted in a probabilistic sense. Current anthropogenic change, beyond causing trends in mean environments, also modifies the patterns of these fluctuations, so there is a need to better understand their influences on ecology and evolution. Population responses to environmental noise depend not only on the magnitude of fluctuations, but also on their alternation pattern, as captured by their temporal autocorrelation. However, a major challenge when investigating these effects is that their inherent stochasticity requires abundant replication, which is often unfeasible in nature. I will argue that a powerful strategy towards this goal is to use a combination of approaches: theory, experimental evolution, and analyses of natural populations. I will illustrate this by confronting results from our long-term experiments with the microalga Dunaliella salina under randomly fluctuating salinity to theoretical predictions about changes in population size, genetic composition, phenotypes, and fitness. I will end by considering how ecological interactions, within and between species, may alter these population responses to randomly fluctuating environments.
Bio
Luis-Miguel Chevin did his PhD at University Paris South (2005-2008) then a postdoc at Imperial College London in Silwood Park (2009-2011). Luis-Miguel was hired in 2011 as a permanent CNRS researcher at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, where he is now a CNRS research director.
For more information, feel free to contact events@scilifelab.se or the organizers:
Scientific Committee
- Arild Husby, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University
- Frank Johansson, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University
- Pascal Milesi, SciLifeLab, Uppsala University
- Andreas Wallberg, Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University
- Matthew Webster, Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University
- Tanja Slotte, Stockholm University