Dear DZG-Evolutionary Biology Community,

The 113th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society took place virtually via Zoom and Gather from 30th August to 3rd September 2021. About 350 participants listened to great keynotes, expert and student talks. The subject group Evolutionary Biology hosted 18 short talks, 9 posters, and a workshop on literature search filters that was organized by Lauren Cassidy. Check out https://filternhp.dpz.eu/ for her non-human primate search filter generator. The prize for the best evolution poster went to Elisa Strack (Adaptation of Aphidius ervi to a novel host: preference and fitness consequences), that for the best student presentation to Jule Neumann (Counting days for lunar time-keeping and the evolutionary origins of circalunar clocks).

The next DZG-meeting will (hopefully) be an in-person meeting again and take place in Bonn from 12. – 18. September 2022 – save the date!

Claudia Fricke has resigned from being speaker – many thanks to your commitment, Claudia! Monika Eberhard and Volker Nehring were re-elected as speakers, and Steven Ramm, University of Bielefeld, was newly elected as speaker during our subject group meeting

We had two successful Graduate meetings in 2020 and 2021:

  • Genetics of adaptation: from single loci to polygenic traits, organized by Neda Barghi, Robert Kofler & Christian Schlötterer (Vetmeduni Vienna) – 28-30 September 2020, invited speakers: Joachim Hermisson, Kelly Swarts
  • Animal Communication & Sexual Selection, organized by Monika Eberhard (Uni Greifswald) – 10-12 May 2021, invited speakers: Michael Reichert, Eileen Hebets

We are looking for volunteers who are interested in organizing the Graduate meeting in 2022 (preferably in early spring; in-person, hybrid or online-meeting) – please get in contact with us, if you would like to organize the next meeting (with financial support from DZG)!

The elections for the German Research Foundation (DFG) review board will take place in 2023; the subject group Evolutionary Biology will again be able to suggest candidates to join the review board for the subject area Evolution. Please already think about persons who could be nominated to be a member of the board – we will discuss this during the next subject group meeting in 2022 (during the DZG meeting).

All the best

Monika Eberhard, Volker Nehring & Steven Ramm