Thanks to Sophie and Charlotte for all their hard work in the lab over the last few weeks. We will be sorry to see you go! And thanks also to Frances Chapman, who coordinated Sophie and Charlotte’s placements as part of the Nuffield Research Placements Scheme. Best of luck for the future!

This week’s poetry of the week reflects the gorgeous weather we have been having, and how wonderful it is seeing all the plants and animals of Fife having such fun.

It is from Rupert Brooke’s “The Hill”, and are my favourite lines of poetry. Brooke of course did not survive the First World War, and it is also a good time to remember the countless wastes of life in that war, and in all the conflicts since. Kiss the lovely grass everyone.

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,

Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

Congratulations to Claire on her MPhil, and also on her new job. We will be sorry to see you go, but good luck for the future from all of the Shuker lab!

Our book is due to be published on 31st July. Much excitement….

Three new header photos have been added, two skippers and a swallowtail from our visit to New York State in June (thanks to FDR’s garden, and Rick & Ellen Harrison’s garden for supplying the butterflies).

In the lab, with wasps, the whole she-bang. That’s two this year – mind out!

Emily’s paper on mate-guarding and species discrimination has just been accepted by Evolutionary Ecology, and will be published as part of a special issue on Species Discrimination, following her talk at ESEB last year. Watch this space for details of the final version.

Liam’s meta-analysis of mate choice paradigms has been accepted by Behavioral Ecology, and Becky’s review of sexual selection in parasitoids is now available “online early” at Biological Reviews.

Well done team.