and the BMC Genomics paper is now out! Go here for open access: Pannebakker et al. (2020) BMC Genomics

In more lab news, ex-Shuker lab alumna Nicki Cook and Dave himself have just had a paper accepted in BMC Genomics, led by our dear friend and another lab alumnus, Bart Pannebakker. The paper describes the genomic basis of sex ratio variation in Nasonia vitripennis, with a preliminary GWAS analysis. Thanks to all the co-authors for their work on this!

We are back in the lab, albeit socially-distanced, and wearing masks! What a relief!

Maddy Abbs has started her ASAB-funded undergrad research project, and Ellie is starting up her next experiments. It is WONDERFUL having folks in the lab again.

Great news to start the year – Vicki’s latest paper “Mating failure shapes the patterns of sperm precedence in an insect” has just been accepted for publication in Behavioural Ecology & Sociobiology. Dani is also an author, so congratulations us on a fab team effort.

Congratulations again to Ellie for being one of the recipients of this year’s Unilever Research Prize for Dutch Masters Students. Here is Ellie receiving her prize!

Ellie has been awarded a Unilever Research prize, awarded to the best Dutch Masters students each year – congratulations Ellie! What a fabulous way to start your PhD!

A slightly belated formal website welcome to Ellie Gourevitch, our new PhD student. Ellie has been here six weeks or so and has already started collecting data….!! Ellie will be working on the sex lives of bugs, and is already getting interested in female genitalia – welcome aboard!

Congratulations to Ceile, Joe and Melissa, who have successfully passed their MSc(Res) thesis examinations, with at most only minor corrections! Nice one! Very proud of all your hard work and look forward to getting the publications out there.

Nicki’s perhaps penultimate paper from our lab has just been accepted in Am Nat – nice one Nicki, and thanks also to Darren Parker for all his help with this paper, and the “parent” manuscript currently on biorxiv/in review.

A very Happy New Year to all visitors from everyone in the Insect Behavioural Ecology Lab.

While one cannot deny that 2019 may prove to be a challenging year in all sorts of ways, we will try to keep on studying insects and the evolution of their wonderful behaviours as best we can.

As a fantastic start to the year, here is the lovely front-cover to the latest virtual issue of Ecology and Evolution, starring Vicki’s picture of our pale mutant Lygaeus simulans. Perhaps by the end of the year, we will know a little more about this phenotype and its underlying genetics – have we found a supergene or not?! We’ll keep you posted.