#Evol2012: Preparations

The Ottawa skyline.

The Evolution 2012 meetings (more formally, the First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology) is almost upon us. From 6 to 10 July, members of the American Society of Naturalists, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the Society for the Study of Evolution (three North American professional societies that usually meet jointly) will join the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution and the European Society for Evolutionary Biology in Ottawa for what will be pretty much the biggest meeting of evolutionary biologists ever.

And we’re going to be there! Many of the contributors to Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! are giving talks. From the program [PDF]:

Noah Reid: “Do multi‐species coalescent models fit empirical data?” in the SSB Symposium on Saturday at 9:30 am, in room 214
Devin Drown: “Evolution of transmission mode in obligate symbionts,” in the Evolutionary Theory 1 concurrent session on Monday at 1:45 pm, in room 206
Sarah Hird: “Using gut microbial fingerprints to explore ecology and evolution in Neotropical birds,” in the Phylogeography 7 concurrent session on Monday at 1:45 pm, in room 210
C.J. Jenkins: “Evaluating the Importance of sexual reproduction vs. ploidy in the face of a coevolving parasite,” in in the Evolutionary Theory 1 concurrent session on Monday at 2 pm, in room 206
Jeremy Yoder: “Genome‐wide footprints of local adaptation to habitat in Medicago truncatula,” in the concurrent session Ecological Genetics 11 on Tuesday at 9:45 am, in room 205

(Sarah and Devin will have to fight it out over that scheduling conflict. I propose arm-wrestling.)

In the next couple weeks, we’ll also be posting about sessions that we’re looking forward to. We’re also going to be posting from the conference, of course, highlighting all the coolest new science on the subject of descent with modification.

The official blog for the meeting has been providing some handy resources for those of us who aren’t familiar with Ottawa, including a list of pubs, and information about the city-wide bike sharing program. Over at the Oikos blog, Jeremy Fox has created an annotated map of recommended places to eat and drink. And there’s an officially-selected Twitter hashtag to follow, too: #Evol2012.