Prof. Dr. Holger Schielzeth

May: Official start of my new position at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. For more news see our group news log.

March: Philipp van Kronenberg handed in his Bachelor thesis on the analysis of indirect genetics effects in the grasshopper Chorthippus biguttulus.

February: We'll be relocating the lab from Bielefeld to Jena. Lots of moving business ahead.

January: Sara Bellinvia has finished her Masters thesis on the predictability of behaviour in grasshoppers - with very exciting results.

January: I've been contributing to an interdisciplinary Meeting on Bayesian versus Frequentist Statistics at the ZiF in Bielefeld. The very intersting discussion  was centered on how we best quantify evidence in favour of scientific hypotheses and in how far Bayes factors are useful for this pupose.

December: We have had an inspiring meeting of the Squid Group (Statistical Quantification of Indivdiual Differences)External link. We develop the SQUID R packageExternal link with simulation features for resarch and teaching of variance component analyses using mixed models.

October: There has been an interesting symposium on Theoretical Biology with presentation by Leif Engqvist, Susanne Schindler and Bram Kuijper held on 20/10/2015 at Bielefeld University.

October: Abhijeet Shah has joined our team to work on grasshopper genomics (in collaboration with Joe Hoffmann)..

September: Rob Griffin from Uppsala University has defended his PhD thesis (supervised by Urban Friberg) against the thoughtful comments of his opponent Russel Bonduriansky. Congratulations, Rob, great job!

September: Our manuscript on the quantification of additive genetic variance (and heritability) for non-Gaussian traits is now available on bioRxivExternal link. We hope that this will facilitate that analysis of trait that inherently do not conform to standard normal distributions. Many thanks to Pierre de Villemereuil, Michael Morrisey and Shinichi Nakagawa for the inspiring discussions!

August: A part of our team was visiting the superb Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. It has been great. Special thanks to all contributors to an inspiring symposium on sex-specific genetic variation!

July: Rob Griffin from Uppsala University has handed in his PhD thesis (supervised by Urban Friberg). We have been heavily collaborating on estimating genetic variance in chromosome substitution lines in Drosophila. It has been very interesting projects. Congratulations, Rob!

July: Summer time means that it is field work time for us. I think it great to be able to combine lab work with field work to always keep in touch with the ecology of the species.

June: Pablo got the first paper for his PhD thesis accepted in BMC Evolutionary BiologyExternal link. The paper presents results on developmental colour changes in club-legged grasshoppers. Congratulations, Pablo!

June: This month I will present some of my recent work at the University of Bonn within the Colloquium on Evolution and Biodiversity.

May: Sara Bellinvia started her Masters thesis project on the predictability of behaviour in grasshoppers.

April: Anasuya received a travel stipend from the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE)External link for visiting the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary BiologyExternal link. Congratulations!

March: The Laborjournal ranking in behavioural biologyExternal link reports good reception of our articles, including four publications listed among the most cited articles.

March: One week of teaching a Variance Decomposition Workshop in Bielefeld.

January: Preparation for the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology is progressing. We are looking forward to our symposium on Novel insights in the genetics of sex-specific variation including Daphne Fairbairn and Tim Connallon as invited speakers.

December: Evolution chose one of our female bow-winged grasshoppers Chorthippus biguttulus for the  cover of the December issueExternal link. Our paper on genome size and song attractiveness is on pages 3629-3635.

November: Robert Griffin is visiting from Uppsala. Rob is interested in the evolution of sexual dimorphism and he is exploiting the fascinating possibilities offered by Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism. We are working on some joint analyses with an incredibly rich dataset.

November: First funding for the Tengiz Bird Survey project is now secured! There will be ASA project for two participants. Online application will open on 20 November 2014 and the application deadline will be 10 January 2015. Check their webpage for more information.

October: Our proposal for a symposium on Novel insights in the genetics of sex-specific variation at the ESEB2015 conference has been approved. We are looking forward to welcoming Daphne Fairbairn and Tim Connallon as invited speakers. Proposals for further talks are very welcome and will soon be possible via the ESEB2015 conference website.

October: We are currently revising our R package rptR. The old version had become incompatible with recent changes in R. We aim to release an updated and extended version early in 2015.

September: I have been to the 20th European Meeting of PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB) in La Roche, Belgium. It was an exciting meeting and I was impressed by the diversity of highly interesting projects.

July/August: Off to the field! This year we've been working at two different sites in Switzerland and Austria and did some large-scale sampling of different across the Alpine range of the club-legged grasshopper.

June: Petra has joined our lab as a postdoctoral researcher. She will work on fitness quantification in club-legged grasshoppers in the field. Welcome, Petra!

May: The Laborjournal ranking in evolutionary biologyExternal link reports good reception of our articles (rank 36 among scientists based in the German speaking countries).

March/April/May: Our lab season is in full swing. We are working hard with a team of eight helpers.

February: I have joined the Research Centre for Mathematical Modelling (RCM2)External link at Bielefeld University. This interdisciplinary research center aims to foster collaborations between mathematics and different applied disciplines, including the biological sciences.

January: I am now acting as a founding editor in the new journal Proceedings of Peerage of Science. The journal was launched in January 2014 and follows the interesting concept of publishing short commentary article based on peer reviews. One strength of Peerage of Science as a whole is that it highlights the merit of peer reviews (an essential component of scientific publishing) and aims to improve overall review quality by mutual, though anonymous quality checks.

October: I have joined the editorial board of Methods in Ecology and EvolutionExternal link. Founded in 2010, the journal has quickly risen to one of the top journals on methodological issues covering a broad array of topics in ecology and evolution. The journal offers great opportunities for disseminating new methodological approaches and software tools. I am particularly interested in new developments in applied biostatistics and think that MEE is a particularly good place for me to keep up to date and contribute to the field.

September: Pablo Valverde received the award for public communication of science at the European Meeting of PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB) in Exeter, Cornwall. He convinced the audience by presenting the topic of his PhD project in a concise and entertaining way. Pablo is working condition-dependent sexual signals and mating preferences in the club-legged grasshopper. By the way: Pablo has also started to Blog on his and our work.

July: Field season in Switzerland!

March: Amy Backhouse has joined our group. She is very experienced with insect housing and will help out both in the animal housing and in the molecular lab.

The current project started in Bielefeld. Pablo Valverde and Anasuya Chakrabarty were the first to join the group and began their work on their PhD projects. Pablo started straight away with some field work.