ESEB SYMPOSIUM ON GENES AND ALLELES UNDERLYING ADAPTATION

ESEB SYMPOSIUM ON GENES AND ALLELES UNDERLYING ADAPTATION

Dear Colleagues:

We would like to invite you to attend and/or contribute to the ESEB symposium

'HOW TO IDENTIFY AND TEST THE LOCI AND ALLELES UNDERLYING ADAPTATION?'

which will take place at the 15th Congress of the European Society for
Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), in Lausanne, Switzerland, 10 - 14 August 2015.

INVITED SPEAKERS:
- Felicity Jones (FML, Max Planck Institute, T�bingen, Germany)
- Alistair McGregor (Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK)

ORGANIZERS:
- Paul Schmidt (University of Pennsylvania)
- Thomas Flatt (University of Lausanne)

SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION:
To understand the mechanisms underlying adaptation, causal molecular variants,
genes and pathways must be identified, characterized and   ultimately  
experimentally verified. To this end, various methods for outlier detection,
QTL mapping, and association studies have provided a wealth of 'candidates' for
phenotypes of interest, the response to artificial and natural selection, and
adaptive differentiation within and among taxa. Recent advances in whole-genome
sequencing allow an unprecedented, comprehensive evaluation of
genotype-phenotype associations. However, one major issue with whole-genome
screens is whether any given 'candidate' actually represents a true positive:
population structure and demography, the number of independent chromosomes,
statistical power, and other complications are known to generate false
positives. Thus, one of the emerging challenges in evolutionary genomics is to
unambiguously identify and empirically validate candidates identified in
 omics-level screens. The goal of our symposium is to discuss and showcase how
to best identify and validate candidate variants, genes, and pathways.
Specifically, the symposium aims to (1) evaluate methods by which candidates
are identified and investigated; (2) generate discussion regarding the
significance of functional validation of identified candidates in quantitative,
ecological and evolutionary genetics; and (3) present some of the best current
research related to functional identification and validation.

WEBSITE (see symposium no. 18):
http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/eseb2015/symposium_list/

The site for registration for the ESEB meeting and for abstract submission for
this symposium is now open at: http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/eseb2015/

DEADLINE for abstract submission for contributed talks and posters: 10 January
2015.

We are interested in receiving abstract submissions reporting studies that seek
to identify AND validate ecologically and evolutionarily relevant phenotypic
effects of candidate genes and alleles in the wild or the laboratory.

Abstracts will be evaluated by the symposium organizers and will be selected for
either oral or poster presentation by early March. When submitting your abstract
please state your preference (talk, poster) during the submission process.
Submitted talks will be 17 min each, including discussion, plus 3 min to change
rooms. The overall time window allotted to each symposium will be decided by the
congress committee, depending on the number and quality of submissions.

We are looking forward to seeing you in beautiful Lausanne!

Paul & Thomas.

Paul S. Schmidt
Department of Biology
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
PA 19104-6018
USA
E-mail: schmidtp@sas.upenn.edu

Thomas Flatt
Department of Ecology and Evolution
University of Lausanne
UNIL Sorge, Biophore
CH-1015 Lausanne
Switzerland
E-mail: Thomas.Flatt@unil.ch

Book: Mechanisms of Life History Evolution
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199568772.do

schmidtp@sas.upenn.edu