•    NLSEB Meeting 2025, April 8th  @ Reehorst in Ede! Registration is now open
•    Meet our keynote speakers 
•    Goodbye X, hello Blue Sky

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NLSEB Meeting 2025, April 8th  @ Reehorst in Ede! Registration is now open​

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We are excited to welcome you to the 2025 NLSEB meeting that will be held on Tuesday April 8th  at the Reehorst in Ede. Please note that there will be a venue change this year and the meeting will not be held at Akoesticum as usual but instead we will meet at Reehorst, also in Ede. 

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We have two very exciting plenary talks by Inge Loes ten Kate (Utrecht University) and by Hassan Salem (Max Plank institute) and by the winner of the 2024 Netherlands Evolutionary Biology Prize (will be announced during the meeting). The program, as always, includes two parallel presentation sessions, a cultural intermezzo, and plenty of time for poster presentations and socializing with your fellow evolutionary biologists, to strengthen your networking connections and to establish new collaborations. More program details will follow.

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Registration is now open. To join us on April 8th visit our website and follow the registration link. The link was not directly added to this newsflash to ensure delivery to ovoid being blocked as spam. Via the same registration link you can also submit an abstract (to be considered for a talk or poster presentation). The deadline for abstract submission is on February 10. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 

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​​--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Meet our keynote speakers 

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Dr. Inge Loes ten Kate (Utrecht University) 

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Planetary evolution and what is the role of life.

If we look around us in the Solar System, we see four Earth-like rocky planets, that were all formed around the same time from bits of the same reservoirs but are now 4.5 billion years later entirely different. The biggest outlier of all is the Earth as the carrier of life. The differences between these planets show that we clearly can talk about planetary evolution. What drives the evolution of planets and would the Earth have evolved as it has if there were no life? In this talk I will explain what we can learn from Earth to understand other planets, but more importantly what these planets can teach us about the Earth. I will conclude with a few answers, but probably considerably more questions.

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Dr. Hassan Salem (Max Planck Research Group on Mutualisms, MPI for Biology, Tübingen, Germany)

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Adaptation through symbiosis

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Symbiosis binds organisms from all domains of life. These interactions evolved frequently in animals and exhibit remarkable functional diversity. Where numerous animal traits are encoded by beneficial microbes, as a research group, we study the role of symbiosis in facilitating adaptation. By dissecting how partnerships are regulated and propagated across generations, we also describe the mechanisms ensuring specificity between microbe and host. Using leaf beetles as an experimental study system, I will outline (i) the molecular, developmental, and behavioural features ensuring symbiont maintenance and transmission, (ii) the beneficial roles microbes fulfil towards host nutrition and defence, (iii) the context dependency governing these interactions, and, finally, (iv) the fidelity that arises between symbiont and host following 60 million years of co-dependence. Throughout this talk, I will highlight how timing the acquisition of a beneficial symbiont relative to the evolutionary history of its host can shed light on the adaptive impact of a partnership. This theme is further contextualized relative to our work on mutualism breakdown and the metabolic consequences of going it alone.​​​​​

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​​--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Goodbye X, hello Blue Sky

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We are excited to inform you that our society will be transitioning from our current social platform, X, to Blue Sky @nlseb.bsky.social. This change aims to enhance our communication and collaboration within the community.

We encourage all members to join us on Blue Sky to stay updated on our activities and continue engaging with fellow members. We believe this new platform will offer us better tools and experiences as we move forward.

Thank you for your understanding and support during this transition.

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