Prof. Stephen Stearns’ talk

Hello, dear members!

LERN is delighted to present a talk by Prof. Stephen Stearns, currently Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University.

Prof. Stearns research focuses on evolutionary medicine, life history variation and evolutionary functional genomics, and we are proud to present his talk entitled “Major themes in evolutionary medicine” on May 2nd (next Wednesday). The talk is taking place at the Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre at UCL (please see poster for further details), and as always the entry is free and everyone is welcome!

We look forward to seeing you all there!

Interesting papers and a reminder to our first talk of the year!

Hello, dear members!

As we’ve mentioned in one of our last posts, one of the new things LERN is bringing you this year is that every now and then we will be calling your attention to papers that we consider to be of general evolutionary interest.

In February, two papers caught our eyes:

• The PNAS paper by Kubinak et al: Experimental viral evolution to specific host MHC genotypes reveals fitness and  virulence trade-offs in alternative MHC types. (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/3422.abstract?etoc). 

A very interesting paper indeed, offering support to the leading hypothesis (Antagonistic coevolution or The Red Queen hypothesis) on how such a great diversity of polymorphisms in vertebrate MHC loci is maintained. Kubinak et al tested the Red Queen hypothesis assumptions by performing serial passage of Friend virus complex (a mouse-specific pathogen) through a series of genetically identical individuals from three MHC-congenic inbred mouse strains.

“Antagonistic coevolution predicts fitness trade-offs associated with pathogen adaptation. Adaptations that benefit pathogen fitness in one host MHC genotype must be costly to pathogen fitness when infecting hosts carrying other MHC genotypes (i.e., antagonistic pleiotropy)”.

Their results indicated a high positive correlation between increased pathogen fitness and high virulence. The adapted pathogens were also significantly more fit when infecting a familiar host genotype than when infecting an unfamiliar host genotype, conferring the necessary selective advantage to hosts carrying rare/unfamiliar MHC genotypes (confirming the assumption of the Red Queen hypothesis).

• The second one is the Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper by Schin-Ichi Fujiwara and John R. Hutchinson:  Elbow joint adductor moment arm as an indicator of forelimb posture in extinct quadrupedal tetrapods. (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/02/17/rspb.2012.0190.short?rss=1)

Fujiwara and Hutchinson developed a quantitative index to infer the forelimb posture of extinct quadrupedal tetrapods. Here is an extract from their paper:

“Evolutionary shifts of forelimb posture are considered to be major events in many lineages (e.g. in basal mammals, dinosaurs, archosaurs and crocodylomorphs). Reconstruction of limb orientation in any extinct taxon is important not only for reconstructing parameters relevant to their palaeoecology, such as locomotor behaviour, gait, and speed, (which might influence metabolic energy budgets and interactions with other individuals), but also for reliably estimating the timings of limb postural transitions in evolution.”

And if you are interested in evolutionary questions concerning morphology, locomotion and biomechanics, why not come to our talk next week (March 7th, see previous post for poster and details) by one of the very authors of this paper? Dr John R. Hutchinson will be joining us to discuss his ideas on ‘The evolutionary co-option of sesamoid bones for foot support in ‘six-toed’ elephants‘.We are looking forward to seeing you all next week!

First 2012 talk: The evolutionary co-option of sesamoid bones for foot support in ‘six-toed’ elephants

Dear members!

Here is the poster for the first of the 2012 round of talks:

Original image source:  http://www.andydrummond.net/elephantina.html

We are looking forward to seeing you all there!

Elephants with “six toes” and a Carnival of Evolution!

Hello everyone and welcome to another year of talk rounds and events from the London Evolutionary Research Network!

We are delighted to announce our first talk of 2012 by Dr John Hutchinson, from the Structure and Motion Lab at the Royal Veterinary College! The talk will be held on March 7th and will have as a title ‘The evolutionary co-option of sesamoid bones for foot support in “six-toed” elephants‘ (nice poster to come early next week). The details of where and when are:

6pm, Wednesday 7th March 2012

Physic A1/3, UCL, WC1E 6BT

And it is FREE!

We have some interesting talks lined up for you this year and, of course, we will be hosting our usuals: student conference, debate, Medawar talk and more! So check this blog (and your emails) regularly so you won’t miss a thing!

Today we would also like to draw your attention to the 44th Carnival of Evolution. In case some of you don’t know, according to the Wikipedia Glossary of Bloggling, a Blog Carnival is:

“A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.“

The proceedings for this 44th monthly meeting of the Society for the Blogging of Evolution are already up and this month it is held by The Atavist. It includes a huge array of evolutionary subjects!

The good news is that if you blog about evolution, you can submit your post here, and if you would be interested in hosting the next Carnival of Evolution: YOU CAN! They are looking for hosts every month and you can register your interest by sending an email to Bjørn (bjorn[at]bjornostman.com).

Another piece of news is that, in addition to advertising our events here, we are going to be posting interesting evolution-related topics about new papers, popular topics, and anything else we think our members might be interested in!

We are planning a year full of great talks!

See you guys soon!

Next Event: LERN/CEE Medawar Memorial Lecture – Matt Ridley

Annual LERN/CEE Medawar Memorial Lecture

‘Genes, Culture and Collective Intelligence’

by

Matt Ridley

Date: Wednesday 7th December 2011, 6pm

Location: Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, UCL, WC1E 6BT [view map]

This event is free and everyone is welcome.

* Click here to download a flyer for this event.