The genomic consequences of 10,000 generations of isolation in a wild mammal

In a new study in Current Biology, Xuejing Wang, Stephan Peischl and Gerald Heckel show that common voles (Microtus arvalis) on the Orkney archipelago have remained completely isolated for more than 5000 years. Orkney voles lost most genetic diversity and harbor high levels of putatively strongly deleterious mutations, yet results of computer simulations and the large current population sizes suggest rather mild effects on their fitness. While isolation leads to genetic deterioration, populations may still escape extinction and persist for very long periods of time.

SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2023

Congratulations to Francesca Angiolani, PhD student at the Behavioural Ecology Division! Her image “Searching for a good father” won the first prize in the category "Object of Study" in the SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2023. She even had a second image awarded by the committee. The picture “Cognition roulette” displays a Tokay gecko during a spatial learning experiment in a radial arm maze.

Prof. Dr. Katie Peichel is elected to the US National Academy of Sciences

Congratulation to Katie Peichel, head of our Institute, for her election to the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in research. Our Institute is extremely proud to host and benefit from the presence of such a great scientist and wonderful colleague.

Hintermann+Weber Research Prize 2022 awarded to Dr Daniel Slodowicz (PhD)

The 2022 Hintermann + Weber prize for applied research in nature conservation has been awarded to a former PhD student of the Conservation Biology Division, Dr Daniel Slodowicz!

His thesis entitled «Grassland Restoration: Relative effectiveness of different restoration methods on plant and invertebrate diversity» convinced the jury by the smart approach and a high practical relevance of the presented results.
Daniel Slodowicz is the second member of the Conservation Biology Division to receive the prestigious H+W Award after Dr Veronika Braunisch in 2008.
Congratulations to Dani for this great achievement!

INSECTS NEED OUR HELP IN A WARMING WORLD, NOW!

If no action is taken to better understand and reduce the impact of climate change on insects, we will drastically limit our chances of a sustainable future with healthy ecosystems.’ This warning in a very topical paper in Ecological Monographs comes from 70 scientists (including Maddy Thakur) from 19 countries around the world. But, they also provide ways to help insects in a warming world complete with management strategies.

Volz Award Winners 2022

The Volz Award for 2022 has been awarded to Annika Freudiger (best publication from MSc thesis: Ecological variation drives morphological differentiation in a highly social vertebrate) and Zuyao Liu (best publication from PhD thesis: Chromosomal Fusions Facilitate Adaptation to Divergent Environments in Threespine Stickleback). They both presented their work as part of the seminar Lecture Series in Ecology and Evolution on November, 1st, 2022. The board of directors congratulates them for their success and whishes them all the best for their upcoming scientific career.

Teaching award

Congratulation to Prof. Dr. Eva Ringler from our institute, who has received a Science faculty award
for her excellent teaching of the lecture "Behavioural ecology, research practical" in the Spring semester 2022.

Mycorrhizal association matters for plant’s responses to climate warming

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Maddy and his collaborators from East China Normal University show that terrestrial plants allocate more biomass to roots in warm and dry environments. In wetter environments, plants’ strategies are dictated by their mycorrhizal association. Plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi do not have to allocate more biomass to roots in warmer and wetter conditions. Based on a global meta-analysis, these results provide important insights into factors that would alter terrestrial carbon dynamics in response to climate warming and precipitation variability.

Two Bernese researchers receive SNSF Advanced Grant

Two Bernese researchers receive SNSF Advanced Grant

Neuropsychologist Katharina Henke and evolutionary biologist Katie Peichel are each receiving a highly endowed SNSF Advanced Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Their research projects deal with the ability to remember despite amnesia and the predictability of evolution.

How do organisms respond to, and recover after climate extremes?

In a recent review, Maddy and his co-authors present an extensive review of literature to show that most taxonomic groups living in terrestrial ecosystems are vulnerable to climate extremes, such as heat waves and prolong periods of drought. They further propose a conceptual framework to better integrate ecology of organisms to predict how they may recover after climate extremes have stopped.

CELL - The genomic origins of the world’s first farmers

In a paper published in Cell, Nina Marchi and colleagues determine the precise genetic origins of the first Neolithic farming populations in Europe and Southwest Asia, as well as the processes and the timing of their differentiation. Demogenomic modeling of high-quality ancient genomes reveals that the early farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a multiphase mixing of a Southwest Asian population with a strongly bottlenecked western hunter-gatherer population after the last glacial maximum. Moreover, the ancestors of the first farmers of Europe and Anatolia went through a period of extreme genetic drift during their westward range expansion, contributing highly to their genetic distinctiveness. This modeling elucidates the demographic processes at the root of the Neolithic transition and leads to a spatial interpretation of the population history of Southwest Asia and Europe during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

Interview with Wyss Academy Prof. Margaret Owuor

An interview with Prof. Dr. Margaret Owuor ahead of the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference:
Margaret Owuor, Professor for Integrative Biodiversity Conservation Science at the Wyss Academy for Nature, knows all too well that policy statements and declarations for conservation are being decided on a global level. Which is one of the reasons why the scientist wants to see such issues broken down to the local level. With this strategy she intends to empower communities in her native Kenya. Which in turn could contribute to the goal of an ecosystem-based management approach.

JMS Prize Winner 2022 - Catalina Chaparro

Congratulations to Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza for receiving the John Maynard-Smitz Prize of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) in 2022!

Anna Feller wins faculty prize for best PhD thesis 2021!

Many congratulations to Anna for winning the faculty prize for best PhD thesis in biology in 2021 at University of Bern! Her thesis is entitled "On the genetic architecture of an adaptive radiation". She studied the genetic architecture of various traits such as head morphology, colour traits and sex determination in Lake Victoria cichlids that form one of the most spectacular adaptive radiations.

Volz Award 2022

This award will be given every two years for

- the best publication, resulting from a master thesis at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution.
- the best publication, resulting from a dissertation at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution.

The award is endowed with CHF 500.-.

Please send your application until Saturday, 30 April 2022 to susanne.holenstein@unibe.ch.

Teaching award

Congratulations to 4 teachers from our Institute, who have received a Science faculty award for their excellent teaching in Fall semester 2021:

- Prof. Dr. Madhav P. Thakur (Advanced concepts in Ecology and Evolution)
- Prof. Dr. Raphaël Arlettaz (Conservation Biology research practical)
- PD Dr. Jean-Yves Humbert (Conservation Biology research practical)
- PD Dr. Veronika Braunisch (Conservation Biology research practical)

Maddy Thakur has been awarded with an ERC

We are very pleased and proud to announce that Prof. Dr. Madhav (Maddy) P. Thakur has been awarded with an ERC Starting Grant to investigate how climate extremes will affect terrestrial biodiversity above and below ground. His project Food webs and biodiversity change in an extreme world (FoBEx) will consist a series of outdoor and indoor experiments to gain a mechanistic understanding of how contemporary biodiversity loss could be linked to anthropogenic climate change. FoBEx will collect high-resolution temporal data of the responses of microorganisms, invertebrates and plants to heat waves and extreme droughts. Maddy started as an assistant professor tenure track at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) in August 2020, and is strengthening climate change-biodiversity research at the IEE through his ERC StG

Climate change and phenology: A new paper in Nature Climate Change

A new synthesis conducted by a group of international scientists including Madhav P. Thakur from the University of Bern reveals mismatches between above- and belowground plant phenology due to climate change. These findings are important to understand the consequences of climate change on terrestrial biodiversity.

Projet Lac synthesis report published!

Today the synthesis report of the Projet Lac is published. It summarises the work of over 10 years in which 35 peri-alpine lakes in Switzerland and neighbouring countries were quantitively fished to the first time resulting in a great fish inventory for the alpine region.
One result is the recognition that the large and deep lakes of the region have exceptionally rich fish assemblages because they combine species-rich warm water and species-rich cold water faunas in a unique way: The combination of cold, deep and well oxygenated lakes with geographical proximity to the southern European glacial refugia for warm water fish has led to biogeographical "hybrid communities" rich in warm water species that inhibit the littoral zones and rich in locally endemic cold water species that dominate the open and deep waters (the Galapagos for cold water fish). It is this "hybrid fauna" that explains the richness. It is also the cause of the extreme vulnerability of many species to climate warming and lake pollution.

New paper in PNAS

In their experimental study, Sakshi Sharda, Tobias Züst, Matthias Erb and Barbara Taborsky showed that mothers that had been exposed to predator videos during egg maturation laid heavier and more nutrient-rich eggs. The offspring hatching from these eggs had a 50 msec faster flight reflex at an age of three months compared to the control treatment, revealing an adaptive egg-mediated maternal effect on behaviour.

New paper in Functional Ecology

The environment experienced by an organism can affect the expression of individual traits, such as body shape and behaviour. Such local adaptations might influence sociality on the individual and population levels alike. In a study recently published in Functional Ecology an international team led by IEE MSc-student Annika Freudiger and PI Joachim Frommen showed that environmental settings influence the body shape of cooperatively breeding cichlids. These shape differences were heritable and have the potential to feed back on group structure, thereby highlighting the potential to mediate the evolution and maintenance of complex social systems.

The Scientist - Hybrid animals are not nature's misfits

Science writer Ashley Yeager has written a nice piece in The Scientist about the paradigm shift in our understanding of the role that interspecific hybridization plays in the evolution of biological diversity, featuring our own work and that of others.

Applications

The IEE welcomes applicants for Eccellenza, Prima, or ERC grants to be hosted in our Institute. The applicants should send a preliminary inquiry to the acting Director by email, together with their CV and a brief description of their research project. This inquiry should be done at least 6 months before the grant submission deadline. The proposal will be discussed at the next meeting of the board of directors, and if approved, the applicant will be invited for a public talk. A final decision would then be made soon after and communicated to the candidate.

Nature - The ecological and genomic basis of explosive adaptive radiation

Analysing a phylogeny of all 1700 described cichlid fish species and whole genomes of 100 species endemic to Lake Victoria, Matt, Joana, David, Salome, Remy, Laurent and Ole, together with collaborators in Tanzania, Uganda and the US, have investigated the striking variation observed in cichlid fish speciation rates.

Their analyses reveal that Lake Victoria cichlids diversify orders of magnitude faster than most other cichlids, and that exchange of ancient genetic variants between species dramatically accelerates the origin of new species – given favourable ecological conditions.

Katie Peichel elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Today the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the election of 276 artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors, including Professor Catherine (Katie) Peichel!

Academy members are world leaders in the arts and sciences, business, philanthropy, and public affairs. They are based across the United States and around the world. Current Academy members represent today’s innovative thinkers in every field and profession, including more than two hundred and fifty Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. Katie is beyond honored and humbled to be included in the long list of distinguished members, including international honorary members Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin!

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”

About the distribution of biodiversity on our planet

Dr. Marius Roesti of the Division of Evolutionary Ecology led a study published in Nature Communications that challenges a long-standing explanation for the distribution of biodiversity on our planet. Since Charles Darwin, biologists have been using the so-called "biotic interactions" hypothesis to explain, at least in part, why the tropics around the equator are so species rich. The hypothesis focuses on the importance of interactions between species for biodiversity and is intuitively appealing: the stronger the interactions between species, the faster evolutionary change, thus resulting in increased species diversity. Testing this long-standing hypothesis has proven extremely difficult in the past, and the results from past studies are mixed. This publication in Nature Communications now further challenges the general validity of the "biotic interactions" hypothesis. The study suggests that a specific but fundamental interaction between species – predation by large fish such as tunas or sharks – is stronger in the temperate zone than near the equator. According to the "biotic interactions" hypothesis, stronger interactions should be accompanied by a higher diversity of fish species – a pattern that is also not born out by the study. Marius began the research work while a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and completed it after moving to the University of Bern.

Volz Award 2020

This award will be given every two years for

- the best publication, resulting from a master thesis at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution.
- the best publication, resulting from a dissertation at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution.

The award is endowed with CHF 500.-.

Please send your application until Monday, 30 April 2020 to susanne.holenstein@unibe.ch.

Katie Peichel is an author on the new edition of the Introduction to Genetic Analysis textbook

The 12th edition of the Introduction to Genetic Analysis textbook has just been released. Katie Peichel revised and updated the chapters on Genetics and Genomics, Developmental Genetics, Chromosomal Changes, and Evolution. She added content on next-generation sequencing methods and analyses, as well as an evolutionary perspective on genetic analyses in non-traditional model organisms throughout these chapters. Katie was honoured to be an author on the same textbook (5th edition) she used as an undergraduate studying genetics at UC Berkeley many years ago!

Rats play tit-for-tat

Theory predicts that social partners may exchange service and commodities based on their respective last interaction, a strategy called “tit-for-tat”. Research at the Ethologische Station Hasli has now revealed that wild-type Norway rats indeed play this game. This is in sharp contrast to common belief that animals integrate social experience over a longer timespan before deciding whether to be helpful to a social partner in need. Apparently, they apply a simple rule of thumb that has been shown to generate evolutionarily stable levels of cooperation.

Ole Seehausen and Laurent Excoffier are Highly Cited Researchers 2019

Each year the Web of Science group identifies the world’s most influential researchers, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year. Congratulations to Ole Seehausen and Laurent Excoffier for being Highly Cited Researchers for 2019. This means that 2 of the 12 highly cited researchers at the University of Bern are members of the IEE. Our IPS colleague Markus Fischer also made this list, so 3 of these researchers are members of the Department of Biology!

Bark Beetles Control Pathogenic Fungi

A new study by the Division of Behavioural Ecology and the JMU Würzburg suggests that pathogens can drive the evolution of social behaviour in insects. Ambrosia beetles respond to experimental infection with Aspergillus fungi by social immune defence, which was hitherto known only from eusocial insects such as ants and bees. The study by Jon Nuotclà, Peter Biedermann and Michael Taborsky indicates that the defence against pathogens might be a cause rather than a consequence of the evolution of social complexity.

NatureComm - The coincidence of ecological opportunity with hybridization explains rapid adaptive radiation in Lake Mweru cichlid fishes

Joana, Ole and colleagues published a paper in Nature Communications in which they ask what is more conducive to adaptive radiation into new ecological niches: isolation from related lineages (reduced competition), or contact between related lineages with hybridization generating genetic variation? They did this by studying several cichlid species radiations that had hitherto remained unknown. The greater biotic isolation in Lake Bangweulu would predict fewer constraints by competition yet no lineage had radiated in that lake. In nearby Lake Mweru, where related lineages from different river systems met and hybridized, all hybridizing lineages radiated. The authors conclude that in this system, large amounts of genetic variation generated by hybridization, may have been more important for adaptive radiation than reduced competition.

Nature Communications - Admixture between old lineages facilitates contemporary speciation in Lake Constance sticklebacks

Adaptation to a new habitat can lead to the rapid evolution of new species. However, the genetic mechanisms allowing this are poorly known. A new publication in Nature Communications by David Marques, Kay Lucek, Vitor Sousa, Laurent Excoffier and Ole Seehausen shows now that threespine stickleback inhabiting Lake Constance have arisen from hybridization between two stickleback species from West and East Europe. The exchange of genetic material has facilitated rapid evolution of lake and stream ecotypes within the East European species, with ecotypes now breeding side by side without collapsing back into a single population. Lake Constance stickleback, alongside Lake Victoria cichlids, thus demonstrate that hybridization can be an important genetic mechanism facilitating the rapid evolution of new species.
The link leads to a blog digest of the paper.

SCIENCE - A key metabolic gene for recurrent freshwater colonization and radiation in fishes

Since the last ice age, stickleback have managed to emerge from the sea to colonise many freshwater waterbodies. Genetic analysis by researchers in the Division of Aquatic Ecology & Evolution and the Division of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Bern, and colleagues from the Eawag and the National Institute of Genetics in Shizuoka, Japan, now demonstrate that they achieved this thanks to additional copies of a metabolism gene.

Sinergia project "20'000 years of evolution" has started

Our new SNF Sinergia project entitled "20'000 years of evolution and ecosystem dynamics in the world's largest tropical lake reconstructed from sediment cores, fossils and ancient DNA" has started!