News 2018

From 4 – 6 October, the MGSE and the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity held the first Münster Evolution Meeting at the University of Münster. More than 160 evolutionary biologists from all over Germany attended the meeting who traditionally would visit different meetings and would rarely meet in person, at least not in Germany. The idea was to set up a smaller, local evolutionary meeting that encompasses many facets of evolutionary research and brings together a critical mass of evolutionary biologists across the German speaking countries. With 44 talks, more than 60 posters and a public keynote lecture, the meeting was a resounding success. The program provided a comprehensive overview of the field and allowed the participants to share their research, discuss recent developments, and to connect with each other. Topics ranged from evolutionary genomics to the evolution of biodiversity, or addressed the evolution of evolutionary theory itself, thereby offering a unique picture of current areas of excitement and progress in evolutionary biology. Although it was a pioneering initiative, the first Münster Evolution Meeting appears to have been very well received. During a panel discussion, participants agreed to have a second meeting, which will be held in 2020 in Münster again with the overall aim to establish a permanent sequence of biennial German evolution meetings.

The PhD students of the MGSE have just released the third issue of The Eyebrow – the student magazine for and by PhD students of the MGSE and associated labs. The new issue focuses on science in Münster on the occasion of the Münster Evolution Meeting and is again a solid mix of perspectives and backgrounds. One of the highlights is the announcement of the winners of the Eyebrow photo competition with the winning photographs being published in colour. If you like to stay updated on the Eyebrow, you can now follow them also on Twitter or visit the website of the magazine.

Recent studies suggest that many novel genes arise de novo from previously noncoding DNA. The group of MGSE PI Prof. Dr. Erich Bornberg-Bauer now investigated mechanisms and dynamics of the de novo emergence of eukaryotic protein-coding genes. They compared a high-coverage mouse transcriptome with four other mammalian transcriptome datasets spanning an evolutionary range of 160 million years ago to assess the conservation and age of novel open reading frames (ORFs). They found that novel ORFs pervasively emerge from noncoding regions but are rapidly lost again, while relatively fewer arise from the divergence of coding sequences but are retained much longer. While most of the emerging transcripts are rapidly lost again, some of them become the starting points of de novo gene emergence. As disorder and other protein properties of young ORFs hardly change with gene age, some transcribed de novo genes can evolve from ‘frozen accidents’ of randomly emerged ORFs that survived initial purging. Link to publication: Schmitz JF, Ullrich KK & Bornberg-Bauer E (2018) Incipient de novo genes can evolve from frozen accidents that escaped rapid transcript turnover. Nature Ecology & Evolution. The press release of the WWU can be found here.

Congratulations to Aarón Lecanda Sánchez who was awarded with his doctoral degree today. Aarón conducted his PhD studies at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in the Research Groups RNA Biology of Dr. Sebastian Leidel and Regulatory Genomics of Dr. Juanma Vaquerizas. His PhD thesis is entitled "Bioinformatic Tools and Strategies for the Study of Translation Regulation During Neuronal Cell Differentiation Using Ribosome Profiling". We wish Aarón all the best for his future career!

Prof. Dr. Shuqing Xu has joined the MGSE as Principal Investigator. Prof. Xu is group leader of the Plant Adaptation-in-action Group at the Institute for Evolution an Biodiversity which he joined in May 2018. His group addresses fundamental questions in plant evolutionary ecology using an integrative approach that includes techniques and theories from genomics, molecular biology, chemical ecology and experimental evolution. Their main model system is the aquatic plant Spirodela polyrhiza but also other crop species. We welcome Prof. Xu and look forward to many exciting interactions with him.

The MGSE welcomes Prof. Dr. Vidyanand Nanjundiah and his wife Dr. Veena Rao from the Centre for Human Genetics, Bangalore, IN. Professor Vidyanand Nanjundiah is working on evolution of multicellularity in aggregative amoebae while his wife Dr. Rao is very much engaged in the history of evolution especially the time of J.B.S. Haldane in India. They will stay for about six weeks in Münster and work together with MGSE PI PD Dr. Jürgen Schmitz. On 12 July, Prof. Nanjundiah and Dr. Rao both gave lectures for the MGSE members on their work.

The MGSE is happy to welcome five new PhD students. Three of them started their PhD in the Department of Behavioural Biology: Lena Bohn and Marko Bračić, who will work on different aspects of optimistic and pessimistic decision-making under ambiguity in mice and Taylor Rystrom, who will investigate the adaptive shaping of the behavioural phenotype during adolescence in female guinea pigs. The projects of Lena, Marko and Taylor are part of the SFB-TRR 212 NC3. The same applies to Lai Ka Lo, who started her PhD at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity in the Animal Evolutionary Ecology group. She will focus on niche construction in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. Finally, we welcome Berta Canal, who also works at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity in the Evolution and Sexual Conflict Group on reproduction in a changing world in Drosophila.

On 25 - 26 June, twenty students, postdocs and faculty met for the MGSE workshop, “It’s not my fault: how the social environment shapes individual behavior and vice versa". The workshop was organized by ETT-Fellows Mike Hennessey (Wright State University) and Christina Grozinger (Penn State University), who were joined by Clare Rittschof from University of Kentucky. The workshop participants discussed current research in this field in both vertebrate and invertebrate model systems, and leveraged insights from these systems to develop integrative questions that spanned fields and systems and represented emerging research areas. In particular, the workshop participants were interested in understanding how plasticity is organized across life stages and different life histories, the ecological conditions that favor the evolution of individual recognition, and how parasite pressure shaped social organization and vice versa. The workshop participants left feeling energized and inspired, with ideas for new collaborative projects and initiatives.

According to our current state of knowledge, animals are much more similar to humans than we have long thought. Mammals, for example, display grief, trick opponents, feel empathy, learn, and communicate on a high level while their brain and body show similar reactions like in humans. MGSE PI Prof. Dr. Norbert Sachser now published a book in which he explains how paradigms have shifted in behavioural biology within the last 30 years and how this has changed our understanding of animals and humans: Norbert Sachser (2018): Der Mensch im Tier. Warum Tiere uns im Denken, Fühlen und Verhalten oft so ähnlich sind (Rowohlt-Verlag; ISBN: 978-3-498-06090-9). There are several interviews with Norbert Sachser on his new book, e.g. on the website of the WWU or as broadcast at the Deutschlandfunk.

Many parasites have evolved strategies to manipulate the behaviour of their host, e.g., risk-taking behaviour, to facilitate transmission to the next host. MGSE PhD student Nicolle Demandt was now involved in a study, which revealed that behavioural manipulation by parasites does not only affect the infected host, but also uninfected group members. Nicolle and her colleagues tested how three-spined sticklebacks, behaviourally altered by infections with the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus, influenced the escape and risk-taking behaviour of uninfected group members after a simulated bird attack. Interestingly, uninfected individuals adjusted their risk-taking behaviour to the number of infected group members, taking more risk with an increasing number of infected group members. This result sheds new light on the social dynamics involved in host–parasite interactions. The results have been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Demandt N, Saus B, Kurvers RHJM, Krause J, Kurtz J & Scharsack JP (2018) Parasite-infected sticklebacks increase the risk-taking behaviour of uninfected group members. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 285 10.1098/rspb.2018.0956.  The press release of the WWU can be found here. One of Nicolle’s supervisors, Dr. Jörn Scharsack, was also interviewed by the Deutschlandfunk about the findings of the study.

The PhD students of the MGSE have just released the second issue of The Eyebrow – the student magazine for and by PhD students of the MGSE. The magazine has been launched in February 2018. Editor-in-Chief Daniel Dowling explains in the editorial of the new issue: “The Eyebrow is our attempt to promote scientific communication – be it words or pictures – in a more causal and informal style. We encourage members of the MGSE to write and discuss topics, be it there on field of research, life as a PhD student, or the crossover of science and their myriad other interests.” You can pick up your personal copy of The Eyebrow in the MGSE office building in Hüfferstr. 1a. The website of the magazine can be found here: https://eyebrowevolution.wordpress.com/

Congratulations to Susanne Sangenstedt who was awarded with her doctoral degree today. Susanne conducted her PhD studies in the Department of Behavioural Biology at the Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kaiser. In her thesis she investigated “The adaptive significance of shaping behavioral and endocrine phenotypes to the early social environment”. In addition, Susanne served as PhD Student Representative in the Steering Committee of the MGSE from 2015 to 2018.
We want to thank Susanne for her commitment and wish her all the best for her future career!

On 4 June, Prof. Dr. Christina Grozinger arrived in Münster who will stay as a Fellow of the Evolution Think Tank until the end of July. Christina Grozinger is a Distinguished Professor of Entomology at the Huck Institutes for Life Sciences and the Director of the Center for Pollinator Research at the Pennsylvania State University in the US. In her research she examines the mechanisms underlying social behavior and health in honey bees and related species. Her research interests include social insects, pollinator health, behavioural genomics, neuroethology, chemical ecology, and disease ecology. Christina Grozinger will offer a workshop together with ETT-Fellow Michael Hennessy on "It’s not my fault: how the social environment shapes individual behaviour and vice versa” on 25 – 26 June 2018.

The University of Münster joined the Santander Universities partnership five years ago and has benefited from several of its projects since then. A total of one million euros has been invested in measures for the internationalisation of research and education at the WWU. Prof. Dr. Johannes Wessels, Rector of the University of Münster, now thanked Santander for their commitment and highlighted how the funding helped to promote networking worldwide. The Evolution Think Tank of the MGSE belongs to one of currently four main projects that are supported by Santander Universities at the WWU. Press release by the WWU More on the business cooperation of the WWU with Santander Universities

Last week, Prof. Dr. Michael B. Hennessy arrived in Münster who will stay as a Fellow of the Evolution Think Tank until the end of July. Michael Hennessy is a Professor at the Department of Psychology at the Wright State University in Dayton, OH in the US. He is a trained Psychologist working in the field of Behavioural Neurosciences and Behavioural Endocrinology and has long studied the effects of social separation and social buffering in various rodent and primate species. Together with the group of Prof. Dr. Norbert Sachser and Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kaiser, he also worked on the adaptive shaping of the behavioural and neuroendocrine phenotype during different life stages, especially adolescence. Prof. Hennessy is a familiar face: He was the very first Fellow of the ETT back in 2012.

Proximal promoter regions in eukaryotes are heavily transcribed yielding different types of small RNAs. Their actual function has not been completely understood and it could not be ruled out that many of them are mere by-products of gene expression. MGSE PIs Prof. Dr. Wojciech Makalowski and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Brosius now investigated capped and polyadenylated small RNA transcripts within proximal promoter regions of human RefSeq genes and demonstrated that they regulate downstream gene expression via transcriptional interference. The small transcripts act via the occlusion of otherwise productive transcription factor/DNA interactions. The results have been published in Nucleic Acids Research: Pande A et al. (2018) Transcriptional interference by small transcripts in proximal promoter regions. Nucleic Acids Research 46: 1069-1088. Press release of the WWU

Prof. Dr. Erich Bornberg-Bauer has been awarded with a prestigious Program Grant by the International Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Organization. The HFSP’s collaborative Research Grants are given for a broad range of projects under the umbrella theme “Complex mechanisms of living organisms”. The program funds only cutting-edge, risky projects and provides 3 years of support for international teams involving at least two countries. The selection process is highly competitive: Out of 770 proposals from 50 different countries only 31 have been selected after a multi-level selection process. Prof. Bornberg-Bauer is part of a team that will investigate the role of diet in long-lived termite reproductives. Each team member receives on average 110,000 – 125,000 USD per year. It is the third HFSP grant for Prof. Bornberg-Bauer who was selected by the HFSP Organization already in 2006 and 2013. Press release by the WWU

The 7^th MGSE Symposium was held on 21 – 22 March 2018 at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity at the University of Münster. Around 60 participants attended the two-day event which again offered the graduate students the opportunity to present their research in an oral presentation or a poster. For the first time, also PhD students from the Research Training Group EvoPAD – who are associated to the MGSE – were invited to share their first results, to network with evolutionary biologists in and around Münster, and to gain presenting experience. The programme was completed by talks of four MGSE Principal Investigators and three excellent keynote speakers: On the first day, Michael Lynch – member of the National Academy of Sciences and famous for his work supporting neutral theories of evolution – focussed on evolution at the molecular level. On the second day, Leo Beukeboom and Paula Stockley gave insights into the evolution of sex determination systems and post-copulatory sexual selection.
We would like to thank all presenters and guests who helped making the MGSE symposium a great event again, showing off the diverse research within the graduate school. Programme and pictures...

MGSE PI Francesco Catania recently published an article on autoimmunity and the origin of the adaptive immune system together with Robert Bayersdorf, a former MSc student of the advanced module "The Growth of the Evolutionary Thought". Robert shares now with us how this cooperation came about and draws a conclusion for student education. You can find his report here...

Good news from the DFG: The Grants Committee accepted MGSE Speaker Prof. Dr. Jürgen Gadau as additional Principal Investigator of the RTG EvoPAD. The acceptance comes with funding for a PhD student and equipment. The decision of the Grants Committee is based on very positive peer reviews in which Prof. Gadau is appreciated as a leading figure in the field of sociogenomics, with an excellent track record and a high profile research portfolio. The project of Prof. Gadau will try to identify and understand the gene regulatory networks that keep the interaction between nuclear and mitochondrial encoded genes functioning. Together with Prof. Gadau, 13 Principal Investigators are now involved in the doctoral training within EvoPAD.

ETT-Fellow Prof. Dr. Chris Smith has now published a study which was supported by the Evolution Think Tank of the MGSE. In their work, Prof. Smith and his co-authors identify a highly conserved expression pattern in an insect-only gene family, the Osiris genes, that is essential for development, but also plays a significant role in phenotypic plasticity and in immunity/ toxicity responses. Chris Smith has been a Fellow of the Evolution Think Tank from May to June 2017. The publication can be found here: Smith CR, Morandin C, Noureddine M & Pant S (2018) Conserved roles of osiris genes in insect development, polymorphism and protection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 10.1111/jeb.13238 [doi]

The MGSE PhD students proudly present the very first issue of The Eyebrow – a magazine for and by PhD students of the MGSE. “It is a magazine written, edited, formatted, and ultimately yielded by PhD students of the Münster Graduate School of Evolution. We do not aim to inform, yet we will. We aim not to elucidate, but we will. We do, however, aim to entertain, by letting thoughts run freely,” describes Editor-in-Chief April Snøfrid Kleppe the vision of the magazine in the issue’s editorial. The magazine features reportages from different MGSE groups, news of future and passed events, essays as well as cartoons and riddles, providing beautiful distraction for long days in the lab. The Eyebrow is currently the only student paper at the WWU and is planned to be published quarterly. The fact that the first issue turned out as well as it is shows the potential of the upcoming issues. To convince yourself, you can pick up your copy of The Eyebrow in the MGSE office building in Hüfferstr. 1a. A PDF version of The Eyebrow in colour can be downloaded from the website of the magazine: https://eyebrowevolution.wordpress.com/

Congratulations to Kristina Wensing who was awarded with her doctoral degree on 9 February 2018. Kristina conducted her PhD studies at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity in the group of Dr. Claudia Fricke. In her thesis she investigated "Sex-specific contributions of sexual selection and sexual conflict to male-female coevolution in Drosophila melanogaster".
We wish Kristina all the best for her future career!

Termites evolved eusociality - the reproductive division of labour with overlapping generations and cooperative brood care - independently from and long before social Hymenoptera. A team of researchers led by MGSE PI Prof. Dr. Erich Bornberg-Bauer could now show evolutionary signatures of termite eusociality by comparing the genomes and transcriptomes of three termites and the German cockroach against the background of 16 other eusocial and non-eusocial insects. Their result provide further evidence that major changes in gene regulation and the evolution of sophisticated chemical communication are fundamental to the transition to eusociality in insects. Although this parallels molecular mechanisms of eusocial evolution in Hymenoptera, the specific solutions are remarkably different, thus revealing a striking case of convergent evolution. Original Publication: Harrison MC et al. (2018) Hemimetabolous genomes reveal molecular basis of termite eusociality. Nature Ecology and Evolution. 10.1038/s41559-017-0459-1 [doi]. The press release by the WWU can be found here.

MGSE PI Prof. Dr. Joachim Kurtz and Dr. Jörn Scharsack from the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity contributed to a broadcast on the role of parasites as „global players" in ecosystems on SWR2. The podcast and further information can be found here.