A blog post by Kathryn Stewart (@Kat_A_Stewart) on our paper “ The role of genetic diversity in the evolution and maintenance of environmentally-cued, male alternative reproductive tactics” by Stewart et al. (2019), published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. 19:58. Philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and scientists have pitted nature vs. nurture against one another for a long time. In fact,…
Author: Isabel Smallegange
I am an associate professor of population biology at the University of Amsterdam, at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics.
How can you be Chair if you cannot … (go to after-work events because I have care duties)
“How can you be Chair the Faculty Works Council if you cannot go to after-work drinks?” A (male) colleague from another faculty asked me this a few weeks ago. It totally blew me. I did not know what to say in reply. I am an elected Chair of the Faculty Works Council, one of which…
Lovers and fighters, and how their coexistence affects their evolution within an eco-evolutionary feedback loop
To contribute towards integrating the field of eco-evolutionary dynamics and move the field forward, scientific journals from the British Ecological Society, including the Journal of Animal Ecology, have just published a cross-journal special feature entitled “Eco-evolutionary dynamics across scales”, edited by Franziska Brunner, Jacques Deere, Martijn Egas, Christophe Eizaguirre and Joost Raeymaekers. How evolutionary changes…
Can traits of individuals inform on how populations respond to change? A cross-journal special feature on linking organismal functions, life history strategies and population performance
We are in great need of an integrative framework that allows ecologists to predict life history strategies (i.e. the different ways in which individuals trade-off resource investment into survival or reproduction) from functional traits: traits of individuals that inform on the performance of a population of plants or animals as a whole. To contribute towards…
Selfish supervisors
Supervisors of PhD students and Post Docs are there to provide input and discussion on the research project that their group members undertake. Crucial, also, is that supervisors provide mentoring to their PhD students and Post Docs, which is critical to their career development and advancement. Most supervisors mentor their group members well, but in…
All men are the same – or not? Discovery of a third male type in the bulb mite
If you have read some about bulb mites (Rhizoglyphus robini), you might know that adult males show one of two distinct morphs: fighters, which have these thickened legs with sharp ends that they can use to kill other mites, and scramblers (see photo on the right). These two types of males occur in single populations…
Individuals differ: does it matter? A special issue on individual heterogeneity in Oikos (May 2018)
Individuals, be they plants or animals, are rarely equal. Does it matter that individuals differ? More specifically, what are the consequences for the dynamics of populations of such differences between individuals, also referred to as individual heterogeneity? And how does individual heterogeneity affect the evolution of traits? The scientific journal Oikos has just published a…
Who cares?
I care. I look after my son, together with my partner. But our son needs very predictable schedules, cannot deal well with novel situations, and only feels safest with me, which means I do a lot of the day-to-day care. He is a lovely little boy, and we have all found our way in our…
Women-in-science networks
I have been asked a few times whether I have joined a women in science network. I have never done so. The first time I came across such a network was at the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) where I did my PhD research. At the time, this NIOZ women-in-science network consisted of only…
Women in academia: on the balancing act
I often chat to my students about career choices and these conversations often also cover the topic of gender balance in academia, which typically gets more male biased as you climb the academic ranks. To give you some numbers, I’ve calculated the proportion of fte that are filled by women, from PhD candidate to professor,…
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