A great way to end the year – a phylogenetic analysis of the Christmas elf – not a true elf after all!!
Wishing everyone a very happy, fun and successful 2016!
A great way to end the year – a phylogenetic analysis of the Christmas elf – not a true elf after all!!
Wishing everyone a very happy, fun and successful 2016!
Thanks to Bart Pannebakker and the Dutch Entomology Society for the invite to their Entomologendag 2015 conference yesterday. It was a great pleasure to give the plenary talk and to enjoy many excellent talks during the day, meeting old friends and new early-stage researchers. A fun day!
Our paper on gene expression during oviposition and sex allocation in Nasonia headed-up by Nicki is now out in print in G3. To access the paper, please go here.
Nasonia also made the cover! See Ferree et al. in the same issue for more Nasonia genome fun.
Dave has had a paper on the epigenetic basis of diapause in Nasonia accepted in Genome Research. In a collaboration led by Eran Tauber at Leicester, this work explores how day-length experienced by mothers – the critical cue for maternal programming of larval diapause – influences patterns of DNA methylation in female Nasonia, and shows that experimental manipulation of maternal methylation alters the frequency of diapausing offspring. This work is important for our understanding of larval diapause in Nasonia, but also more generally in terms of exploring the role of DNA methylation, and epigenetics more broadly, in insect function. We will let you know the paper is out in print.
Felicity Muth has just published “To be a Bee” in the latest edition of The Biologist magazine, exploring bee cognition. Felicity worked in Dave’s lab whilst an undergraduate, and then worked with Sue Healy for her PhD, and is now a post-doc in Reno. For more of her popularising of science, and animal cognition in particular, please visit her blog: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/not-bad-science/
Our friend Stu West and helpers review three new Evolution board games – please go here to read his review. Hmmm, I feel a Christmas present coming along…