A truly disgusting example of sexist peer-review has been bravely uncovered by Fiona Ingleby and Megan Head. For details go here:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/04/sexist-peer-review-elicits-furious-twitter-response

Or follow Fiona’s twitter feed here: https://twitter.com/FionaIngleby

I wonder if the reviewer will have the courage of their convictions to come forward and name themselves? And the question we all have to ask ourselves is this: is that reviewer in my department, in the office down the corridor? We still have a long way to go people.

Double-blind reviewing is not “perfect”, but this sickening case only strengthens the argument for it.

Morning. Becky’s Evolution paper and Penelope et al’s Proceedings B paper are both out in print now. For the Evolution paper, please go here, and for the Proc B paper please go here. A good week for Nasonia research!

Congratulations to Liam who submits his PhD thesis today. A terrific collection of experiments and meta-analysis – nice one.

Congratulations to Becky, who has just had her sex allocation cost of polyandry paper accepted in Biology Letters. Nice one. We will let you know when the print version is out.

Becky and Laura’s review of sexual selection in parasitioids is now out in print in Biological Reviews. Please go here for open-access to the manuscript.

More good paper news – Liam’s paper on post-copulatory sexual selection in Lygaeus has just been accepted in Proceedings B. Well done Liam, and thank also to Imran, Emily and Ginny for their help on that paper. Detail of the hard-copy version to follow shortly.

Funding has become available at the University of St Andrews for a BBSRC-funded PhD studentship. We will be offering a project called “Conflicts over sons and daughters in a beneficial insect“. This project offers the opportunity to explore sexual conflict and genomic conflict over sex ratio behaviour in our parasitoid wasp species Nasonia vitripennis. Moreover, we will also look to follow up our latest research on how neonicotinoid pesticides disrupt adaptive sex allocation, and so explore how wasps come into conflict with humans over their sex ratio behaviour (see previous news post).

The project will be published in more detail on findaphd.com, and also on my own Opportunities page. However, we need to fill the position as soon as possible, so if you are interested please drop me an email as soon as you can (email David here).

Photo: Cash/Gibson, ASU, with thanks.

Great news – our paper showing that neonicotinoid pesticides disrupt adaptive sex allocation in Nasonia vitripennis has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In even better news though, collaborator and lead-author Penelope Whitehorn gave birth to her second kiddie, Torrin James. Congratulations and all our very best wishes to Penelope and Calum!

And a big congratulations to Nicki, Jade, Charlotte and Sophie for all their help on the neonics paper. We will let you know when it is out in print.

Becky’s forthcoming Evolution paper on the costs and benefits of multiple mating in Nasonia is getting some media attention (please go here).