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2025 IDEA Award Winner

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Congratulations to Maurine Neiman (University of Iowa), winner of the 2025 IDEA award!

Professor Maurine Neiman has spent her career expanding access and inclusion in the evolutionary biology community worldwide. Her impact through science advocacy and communication has been broad and sustained. She has paired her scientific expertise with public-facing vaccine education, helping bring clear, evidence-based messages to wide audiences. She has also used major editorial platforms to open doors for more people to participate fully in our field. As an editor at the Royal Society’s Proceedings B, Dr. Neiman helped build practices that widen participation in publishing and professional networks, with particular attention to creating meaningful opportunities for early-career scientists internationally. Across all of her efforts, she has been a visible, effective champion for a more welcoming and accessible evolution community—one where more scientists can contribute, be heard, and thrive.

Dr. Neiman will present her work during the IDEA Award Plenary at the virtual portion of the Evolution 2026 meeting in May 2026.

The ASN/SSE/SSB IDEA Award was created in 2019 by the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB). The IDEA Award is given to a person at any career stage who has strengthened the ecology and evolutionary biology community by promoting access and inclusiveness in our fields. The award can also be presented to a group. The recipient receives a plaque at the annual meeting of ASN/SSB/SSE and a $1000 honorarium.

ASN Election, 2026

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

The ASN 2026 Election will be held from February 2 to March 2, 2026, for the offices of President and Vice President. Please see the candidates’ statements below. The election website randomizes the order for each person voting. The names below are in alphabetical order.

The PRESIDENT leads the ASN Executive Council and selects the membership of the award and officer nomination committees. The President selects the President’s Award for the “best” paper in The American Naturalist in the past year, gives the ASN Presidential Address and presents the Society’s awards at the annual meeting, and represents the ASN in multiple other ways through the year. The President serves on the Executive Council for five years, including one year as President-Elect and three years as a Past-President.

Anurag Agrawal, Cornell University

Thank you for this opportunity to serve one of my most beloved communities. I am an evolutionary ecologist and naturalist, broadly interested in questions and approaches that help us understand our natural and social world. My primary research has focused on plant–herbivore coevolution, using tools from comparative biology, experimental manipulations, genetics, and natural history.

I was an undergraduate Biology major and then a master’s student in Conservation Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, and I went on to UC Davis for my PhD in Population Biology (1999). With the support of mentors, peers, and students, I have been fortunate to be recognized by several societies in the ecological and evolutionary sciences and in the broader arenas of scholarship, including recent election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Most of my service and leadership has been within Cornell—mentoring junior faculty, serving on university committees at multiple levels, and helping to direct our interdisciplinary sustainability center during its founding. Outside of Cornell, I have served as Vice President of ASN and on several committees of ASN and Ecological Society of America.

As a graduate student, I aspired to publish in The American Naturalist, and only after four rejections did I finally make it! The journal and society have long felt closest to my core interests, and several standalone meetings remain among my most enjoyable conferences and scientific interactions. This is the society for which I would feel most comfortable in a leadership role because of the alignment of interests, values, and the people.

To the extent that I can, I would like to help steer the Society in the direction its membership wants to go, while of course keeping in mind the Society’s enduring mission: conceptual unification across biology, using whatever tools are needed. I strive to be fair, to listen carefully and consider diverse perspectives, and to be decisive when decisions are needed. At my core, I want to promote intellectual curiosity, staying true to the pursuit of understanding nature, and expanding access to that pursuit. I finally have the space in my life, personally and professionally, to give back to ASN, and I am grateful for the opportunity.

Maria E. Orive, University of Kansas

I am extremely honored to be considered for the position of President of the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the possibility of continuing to serve the society in this role. My research develops mathematical models that provide a conceptual framework for exploring important questions in evolutionary biology and eco-evolutionary processes. Much of my work has focused on the role of reproductive strategy (e.g., asexual and clonal forms of reproduction, and sexual reproduction) in shaping the genetic diversity available for evolution to act on, and the relative strengths of those evolutionary forces.

I completed my undergraduate degree at Stanford University, and received my PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where I was advised by Monty Slatkin. I first joined ASN while I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley and published a chapter of my dissertation in The American Naturalist during that time. My further training involved two postdoctoral positions, one in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia with Marjorie Asmussen, and the second as an NSF NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh with Nick Barton. I joined the faculty at the University of Kansas (KU) in 1997, where I am currently Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Associate Dean for Natural Sciences and Mathematics. While at KU, I spent one year as a Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University, and I was named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in 2022.

I have contributed extensive service to science and to scientific societies, including serving as Associate Chair of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) Advisory Board (2008–2011), on the American Genetic Association Council (2013–2015), and on the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) Council (2021–2023). While on SSE Council, I served on the SSE Rosemary Grant Award Committee, the SSE Hamilton Award Committee, the SSE Gould Award Committee, and the SSE Constitution and Bylaws Ad Hoc Committee. I also served as an associate editor for Evolution (2022–2024) and was a long-time member of the SSE Diversity Committee (2017–2020, 2021–2023). I was elected President of the American Genetic Association (AGA), and served as President-elect / President / Past-President from 2018–2020; during my term I planned and convened the 2019 AGA President’s Symposium (Sex and Asex: The Genetics of Complex Life Cycles) and acted as associate editor for the resulting special issue of the Journal of Heredity. I am currently serving on the Board of Directors for a relatively new society, the Society for Modeling and Theory in Population Biology (SMTPB, term to end December 2026).

My association with ASN stretches back to my time as a graduate student, and it is in The American Naturalist that many of my most impactful papers have been disseminated. I served on the ASN Nominations Committee from 2018 to 2022 (Chair in 2020), and was an Associate Editor for The American Naturalist from 2019 to 2021, an experience that was profoundly gratifying, as I was able to support publication of amazing theoretical papers during that time. I’ve also served as a judge for the ASN Outstanding Student Poster Award (previously the ASN Ruth Patrick Student Poster Award), and participated in ASN Symposia at the Evolution meetings, such as the ASN Symposium “The Theory of Evolution” at the 2021 virtual Evolution meeting. I am currently the ASN Representative to the Education and Outreach Committee, which acts as the review and selection committee for the Undergraduate Community at Evolution Program (formerly the Undergraduate Diversity at Evolution Program), a service I began in 2024; my connection with this program is one of my longest service activities, as I served as a mentor to undergraduates at more than 10 Tri-Society meetings, and some of my former undergraduate mentees are now faculty members themselves whom I continue to see at the Evolution meetings.

The American Society of Naturalists occupies an important position in the biological sciences, spanning scientific research across the biological disciplines of evolution, ecology, and behavior, and with a long history of supporting and promoting many types of inquiry, from empirical to theoretical, and including laboratory work and field studies. This breadth is reflected in the society’s motto, which states a goal of enhancing “the conceptual unification of the biological sciences.” To continue this broad work in our current scientific climate, the society needs to continue and expand its mission of supporting the biology research community, promoting the inclusion of scientists from diverse institutions and backgrounds, and publicize the knowledge and appreciation of behavior, ecology, and evolutionary biology to society at large. As ASN president, I would work with ASN membership to develop mechanisms to increase support and access for scientists from institutions we see less often at both our stand-alone meetings and at the larger joint evolution meetings; making sure our awards and programs are accessible and achievable for a wide range of trainees and established scientists will allow us to bring together the broad expanse of expertise we need to make the next important conceptual leap. Across the globe, there are currently many forces threatening both the practice of science, and the natural world we study. Scientific societies, while not engaging in political advocacy, can be strong advocates for science, for education, and for the study and appreciation of the biological world. I would support efforts to expand our membership’s ability to engage via sharing our science in approachable and impactful ways, and by creating resources that translate our work for the general public.

The VICE-PRESIDENT organizes the Vice-President’s Symposium for the annual meeting and edits the special supplement to The American Naturalist that contains the papers derived from the VP Symposium. The Vice-President is also the Society’s liaison for the organizers of the annual meeting. The Vice-President serves as a member of the Executive Council for three years, including one year as Vice-President Elect and one year as a Past Vice President.

Megan Frederickson, University of Toronto

I am delighted to put my name forward for the position of Vice President of the American Society of Naturalists. I study mutualism and symbiosis in both host-microbe and plant-animal systems. I have long been fascinated by how the reciprocal benefits exchanged in mutualisms give rise to positive feedback between partners, entangling their ecological and evolutionary fates. Briefly, my research seeks to understand how mutualism and symbiosis evolve and how these interactions affect other ecological and evolutionary processes including community assembly, biological invasions, range dynamics, adaptation, and coevolution. I do this work in plants, insects, and microbes—when it comes to study organisms, the only hard rule in my lab is ‘no bones.’

I received my bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 2001 and my Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2006, before returning to Harvard as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2006 to 2009. I am Canadian, but between getting my degrees in the US, attending high school in Hong Kong, and my many years of field research in the Peruvian Amazon, I have lived nearly half of my life abroad, which has given me a deep sympathy for international students and scholars, and migrants more generally. In 2009, I was lucky to get a faculty position back in Canada and I am now a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. I still have a real fondness for California and Massachusetts, though, and I did a sabbatical at UC Davis in 2015–2016 and was a Radcliffe Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard in 2020.

I also have strong ties to academic societies across the US–Canada border, especially the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) and ASN, of course. From 2022 to 2025, I was the Treasurer of CSEE, and I handled the CSEE budget, financial statements, expense reimbursements, insurance, and so on. I have been an Associate Editor at The American Naturalist since 2015 and previously served on the ASN Nominating Committee. Over the years, I have attended most of the ASN stand-alone meetings at Asilomar, where I have judged grad student and postdoc talks, served as a student mentor, and failed spectacularly at trivia night. Beyond academic society work, I have also been on many provincial and federal grant panels in Canada; I am currently on the multidisciplinary review panel for the New Frontiers in Research Fund and I previously co-chaired the Evolution and Ecology evaluation group for the NSERC Discovery Grant program.

I am excited to be considered for the position of ASN Vice President because the ASN community has long been my intellectual ‘home.’ If elected, I would organize a VP symposium on integrating positive interactions into evolutionary medicine—a research area that tends to emphasize antagonisms, especially infectious disease. I would invite speakers working at the interface between ecology and evolutionary biology, microbiome science, and biomedicine. I would also explore ways (e.g., hybrid options) to ensure the full participation of our diverse scientific community at the symposium regardless of citizenship or other constraints on travel to conferences.

Lee Hsiang Liow, University of Oslo

I identify as an evolutionary biologist. I try to harness the power of the fossil record to answer macrevolutionary questions of interest across the paleontological and “contemporary” biology divide. I am concerned about estimating ecologically and evolutionarily relevant parameters that can inform patterns and processes that might cut across vastly different timescales. Although I work on diverse systems that “serve” my research questions, marine invertrebrates, especially bryozoans have a special place in my heart.

I recieved my BSc (Hons) in Zoology from the National University of Singapore in 1996, then completed an MSc in Conservation Biology jointly with the Swedish Agricultural University and Uppsala University in Sweden. I defended my PhD with the Committee for Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, in 2006. I am currently a Full Professor and Curator at the National History Museum at University of Oslo in Norway, after a long postdoctoral period at University of Oslo’s Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis. I was awarded a prestigous European Research Council Consolidator Grant in 2017 and am the 2020 recipient of the Charles Schuchert Award from the Paleontological Society, their highest reseach honor given to younger researchers.

I served with the British Ecological Society as a Senior Editor of Methods in Ecology and Evolution from 2017–2022, and am currently serving as an Associate Editor at Ecology Letters, Evolution, and Paleobiology. I have organized many topical symposia, at the annual Geological Society of America (GSA) as well as the European Society for Evolution Biology (ESEB) meetings. These symposia are unified by their aims to build bridges between paleontology and “neontology”, natural history and statistical aproaches, micro- and macroevolution. I also served as an elected broad member of the Volkswagen Foundation funded PaleoSynthesis Centre at FAU Geozentrum Nordbayern, Germany from 2019–2023 and am a current Board Member of EMBO (European Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2024–2027 term).

ASN has a special place in my heart for publishing papers that are careful, in-depth and detailed, supported by an editorial team and reviewer pool that are nothing short of the best. My very first paper in Am. Nat. (2004) was a chapter from my PhD dissertation, and my latest one in 2024, both of which I am proud of, because they went through the tough but thoughtful review process at Am. Nat. I also have painful rejections from Am. Nat., but they only made my admiration for ASN grow and my work better. I am a very fresh member of the ASN (from Jan 2025) and met with some of the people whose science and editorial work I deeply respect for the first time in Asilomar in Jan 2025.

I am excited to be more directly interacting with members of the ASN beginning with my first society meeting last January, after more than two decades of admiring the ASN from a distance. There are currently unprecedented, exciting developments, many led by junior scientists, in linking microevolutionary theory and patterns with macroevolutionary insights and frameworks. If elected, I would be really motivated to organize a VP symposium that stimulates us to link evolutionary and ecological processes that are usually studied on shorter time scales with paleobiological and macroevolutionary patterns and processes that are observed and inferred at much longer timescales. And even though the VP’s role is mainly editorial, I am also invested in helping the ASN grow and remain connected internationally in these turbulent global times. I will strive to help us do the best science we can, not least by nurturing and supporting junior scientists, and giving all of us courage to continue building shared knowledge and promoting curiosity-driven science. Remember the age-old saying: sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.

A truly mixed bag—A mathematical model of mixotroph adaptations to changing ocean temperatures

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Kevin M. Archibald, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, Charlotte Laufkötter, and Holly V. Moeller: Read the article

Microbes are everywhere. They are organisms invisible to the naked eye, but their populations and communities pack a punch far beyond their size when it comes to ecosystem health. In our oceans, changes in microbial communities often signal, or even drive, broader ecological shifts.

Temperature changes in our oceans and marine systems occur across a wide range of timescales. Daily cycles, like the difference between day and night, are examples of short-term fluctuations. Seasonal changes over months and longer-term trends, such as rising average temperatures over decades, represent more sustained thermal pressures. Microbes have certain temperatures in which they grow fastest, but when temperature fluctuates, growth challenges arise. Strategies that microbes use to account for both short- and long-term fluctuations can be both genetic and metabolic. A recent study by Archibald et al. investigates how temperature stress and fluctuations affect the adaptation of a special group of microbes called mixotrophs. Mixotrophs are unique because they can harvest energy in multiple ways: through photosynthesis, grazing other organisms, or by combining both strategies. This flexibility allows them to thrive in dynamic environments—a trait that’s increasingly important as climate change disrupts ocean temperatures. But how does thermal variation affect the metabolic strategies accessible to mixotrophs?

Prior experimental work by Dr. Moeller’s group (Leprori-Bui et al.) showed that mixotroph evolution can help microbes deal with thermal stress. However, the limits to this evolution remained unknown. When considering evolution, the authors focus on genetic changes that increase an organism's fitness, here described as the rate of cell divisions. For example, a change in a gene from parent to offspring that allows a protein to increase its optimal temperature. However, genetic changes like these that are necessary for evolution take many generations to impact the fitness of a population. So, what about the short-term temperature shifts we talked about earlier? The good news is that evolution is not the end-all be-all of mixotroph responses! They can more rapidly change their traits via phenotypic plasticity. Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of an organism to change its metabolism without needing to undergo several reproductive events. Phenotypic plasticity can occur within hours to days in microbes and it is generally how microbes respond to short-term temperature variations.

To understand how the aspects of mixotrophy (grazing, photosynthesis, a combination) respond both genetically and metabolically to different temperature variations, the researchers developed a dynamic mathematical model of a mixotroph population. By studying how the simulated population changed its overall investments in photosynthesis, grazing, and reproduction in response to temperature shifts, the researchers found that varying the metabolic strategies through plastic and genetic changes help mixotrophs deal with the stress of changing temperature conditions. While short-term metabolic responses to temperature changes can be very large, over long time-scales evolution helps mixotrophs return to normal even if the temperature remains high. This stability in metabolic strategy over evolutionary timescales shows a strong resilience in the mixotrophic lifestyle, potentially minimizing disruption to ocean carbon cycling.

Note that the level of warming simulated (6 degree Celsius) is extreme when compared to predicted global average temperature changes (0.5-2 degree Celsius), but represents realistic heat waves that can last for over a year in some cases. Single-celled organisms like mixotrophs evolve quickly (timescales of hundreds of days), so these evolutionary and metabolic effects play out during heat waves as well as centuries-long warming trends.

Future expansions to this work could consider how multiple successive warming events, changes to evolution or phenotypic plasticity rates, and community dynamics (resource competition) might impact the strategies that mixotrophs will use to contend with a warming ocean.

As oceans continue to warm, mixotrophs may be among the microbial world's most agile survivors, shape-shifting strategists at the heart of marine food webs. Ubiquitous and crucial, the ability to account for changes in their traits due to temperature changes will expand our understanding of changing oceans for microbial generations to come.

Hagen Klobusnik is a second-year PhD student in the Kremer Quantitative Ecology and Evolution Lab at the University of Connecticut. Their research focuses on aquatic microbial population and community dynamics in temporally variable environments, combining mathematical modeling and empirical data. When not thinking about cool science they can be found weeding their garden, hiking under tall trees, or reading hard science fiction books.

What Is an Elevational Range? A New Study Advises on How to Measure Where Species Live

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Ethan B. Linck: Read the article

Elevational ranges are a focus of intense study, particularly as climate change drives species upslope. But what, exactly, are they, and how do we measure them? In his new Synthesis, Linck addresses these questions and more with community science data

Drawing a polygon around where a species lives sounds simple, until you realize that that polygon shifts with the seasons, changes by slope and aspect, and drifts over years as climate conditions change. For decades, ecologists have studied how mountain-dwelling species move in response to climate change. However, a new study argues that we’ve been measuring those movements in ways that leave us with an incomplete understanding. In "What is an Elevational Range?", Dr. Ethan Linck of Montana State University synthesizes the elevational range limit literature and challenges the conventional approach of measuring species ranges based solely on presence/absence data.

As the planet warms, species are often expected to track their preferred temperatures by shifting upslope or poleward. However, real-world findings have found significant variation in shift directionality and speed. For instance, some species move upslope while others don’t move at all, with some even shifting downslope. Linck suggests that part of the variation stems from how we define elevational ranges in the first place.

Drawing on large-scale community science data from eBird, a worldwide community science database for documenting birds, Linck highlights that species’ elevational distributions are far more variable than static maps might suggest. For example, the Yellow-eyed Junco, a mountain bird of the American Southwest, doesn’t stay at a fixed band of elevation. Its range shifts year to year, differs by aspect and mountain range, and populations vary in abundance across elevations. These findings suggest that a single number, such as the lowest or highest observed elevation of a species, fails to capture the full picture and that abundance metrics provide greater advantages when trying to understand species’ range dynamics.

As Linck explains, “Overly simple descriptions of elevational ranges also limit understanding. For example, variation across space is often ignored. The situation is similar for temporal variation in elevational ranges, where few studies have attempted to describe interannual fluctuations in detail.”

Importantly, Linck introduces a conceptual framework for thinking about elevational ranges. Instead of viewing them as simple endpoints (e.g., the lowest and highest locations where a species has been documented), he urges researchers to treat ranges as multi-dimensional patterns shaped by factors like abundance, habitat, and even individual traits. He also emphasizes the need to match research scale to the research question: small-scale patterns may be governed by daily movements, while large-scale range patterns are the result of evolutionary history and dispersal.

The study’s practical takeaways are clear: scientists should measure not just where organisms are, but also how many are present at various elevations. They should replicate surveys over time, account for imperfect detection, and ultimately, embrace the complexity rather than obscure it. By refining how we measure range shifts, Linck’s work lays a foundation for more accurate predictions of biodiversity responses to climate change. As warming continues to push species to the brink, better tools for tracking their shifts will prove critical for conservation efforts.

Peter Billman is a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut in Dr. Mark Urban’s lab. His research investigates the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms shaping species’ range limits, with a particular focus on how biotic interactions and climatic tolerances constrain distributions under climate change. He also examines how disturbance events such as wildfires shape evolutionary dynamics, focusing on patterns of genetic structuring and the maintenance of genetic diversity in amphibian populations across mountain ecosystems. By integrating ecological theory with empirical data, his work seeks to advance our understanding of the mechanisms that govern species persistence in rapidly changing environments.

2026 American Naturalist Student Paper Award

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

The American Naturalist 2026 Student Paper Award is for work that was published in 2025 and that was performed primarily by the first author and primarily while she or he was an undergraduate or graduate student. The Editors of the journal, in consultation with Associate Editors, examine all student-authored papers in the journal to select an outstanding contribution that advances the journal’s goals of changing the way people think about organismal biology (including but not limited to ecology, evolution, and behavior) by providing new conceptual insights.

Winner:

Fanny Laugier, Kévin Béthune, Florian Plumel, Céline Froissard, Jean-Marc Donnay, Timothée Chenin, François Rousset, and Patrice David. 2025. “Cytoplasmic Male Sterility Declines in the Presence of Resistant Nuclear Backgrounds.” The American Naturalist 206:16–30.

Genetic conflicts within individuals occur when genes have opposing phenotypic effects, such as when mitochondrial genes conflict with nuclear genes. One such conflict, cytoplasmic male sterility, often underlies a key mating system in plants: gynodioecy, in which mitochondrial sterilizing genes produce male-sterile female plants and nuclear genes restore male function and generate hermaphrodites. A rich theoretical literature has modeled the maintenance of genetic variation within populations in the context of cytoplasmic male sterility, but empirical studies have lagged behind theoretical developments. Here, Fanny Laugier and colleagues (2025) conducted an elegant experimental test of the evolution of cytoplasmic male sterility genes and nuclear restorers in Physa acuta, a cosmopolitan freshwater snail in which gynodioecious natural populations were discovered in France. Laugier and colleagues tested predictions generated from the theoretical literature through an innovative design in which they created 14 experimental populations with different starting frequencies of male-sterile vs. male-fertile cytotypes. In advance of the experiment, the authors conducted a series of crosses to ensure that the founding individuals of both cytotypes within each experimental population had the same nuclear background. Laugier et al. monitored mitotype frequency in these populations over 11 generations to estimate selection coefficients, and they collected data on fitness components at generation 6. Concordant with theoretical expectations, the male-sterile cytotype declined in frequency over time and had reduced fitness when restorers of male fertility had high frequency. This demonstration of a cost of cytoplasmic male sterility confirms predictions. The editors of The American Naturalist applaud the novelty of this work, from the compelling research question to the creative experimental design and exciting animal system. This study will propel forward not only the field of cytoplasmic-nuclear conflict but intragenomic conflict more broadly.

Honorable mention:

Sagar Karmakar,* Amit Samadder,* and Joydev Chattopadhyay. 2025. “Investigating Tipping and Its Predictability in Noisy Environments: Evaluating the Impact of Temporal and Species Response Correlation.” The American Naturalist 206:E63–E77.

Ecological systems can undergo sudden transitions, known as “catastrophic regime shifts,” with potentially significant impacts on population dynamics or abundance. It is well appreciated that, in single-species systems, such transitions can be triggered by environmental fluctuations, a phenomenon known as “noise-induced tipping.” But what happens in multispecies communities, where species can respond in different ways to the environment? The authors used simple conceptual models to investigate the joint effect of correlations in species responses and environmental fluctuations on the stability of ecological systems and the potential for catastrophic regime shift. They demonstrate that positive correlations in species response generally delay the onset of tipping and affect the reliability of early warning signals for predicting sudden ecological changes. This is a great example of how theoretical models can be used to shed light on general conceptual questions, generate potentially testable predictions, and open new perspectives for further investigation of more complex systems. The Editors were also impressed by the quality of the writing and figures, which allowed the authors to present difficult theory using intuitive examples or explanations that most readers will be able to understand.

*Note: Both Sagar Karmakar and Amit Samadder are students.

Call for Symposium Proposals for Evolution 2026

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Deadline Extended: Now due February 3, 2026

The American Society of Naturalists will be participating in a joint meeting with the Society of the Study of Evolution and the Society of Systematic Biologists in May and June 2026! This includes hosting a special symposium during a virtual conference of the three societies on May 20–22.

Have an idea for this special symposium? We want to hear it!

The ASN Symposium Committee invites you to submit proposals for a special symposium. Proposed symposium topics should support the Society’s goal to advance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences and to further knowledge in evolution, ecology, behavior, and organismal biology. Topics could center around important emerging issues in evolution, ecology, or behavior or focus on a pivotal historical paper, tracing its impact and exploring current cutting-edge research inspired by this work.

Proposals should include (1) a title; (2) a description of the symposium topic (up to one page); (3) a list of six speakers, including institutional affiliations, who have agreed to participate in the symposium; (4) a justification for the symposium, explaining why the topic and speakers are appropriate for an ASN symposium (up to one page).

Please submit proposals by email (cas383@miami.edu) no later than midnight Eastern Time on February 3, 2026. Send your proposal as a single pdf attachment, under subject heading “ASN 2026 Virtual Symposium Proposal”.

In line with the ASN's commitment to diversity, we encourage including speakers from groups who have been historically excluded from STEM. Therefore, proposals that include a diverse list of speakers from a range of backgrounds, institutions, career stages, geography, gender, race, etc. are especially encouraged. Further, we especially encourage early career researchers to propose sessions as organizing symposia can advance their careers through building broader scientific networks and a record of scientific leadership.

Additionally, the Society’s selection committee will evaluate proposals based on their potential to attract a substantial audience and stimulate discussion, the significance and timeliness of the topic, and on the topic differing substantively from recent symposia hosted by the Society. Applicants will be notified of the decision before the end of February 2026.

Christopher Searcy
ASN Symposium Committee Chair
Department of Biology
University of Miami
cas383@miami.edu