Society-Wide Newsletter: Fall 2020
Table of Contents
- Message from the President
- Message from the Communications Editor
- Message from the SICB Website Redesign Committee
- Message from the Program Officer
- Message from the Treasurer
- Message from the Secretary (and Secretary-Elect)
- Message from the ICB Editor
- Message from the IOB Editor
- Message from the Broadening Participation Committee
- Message from the Student-Postdoctoral Affairs Committee
- Message from the Education Council
Message from the President

Beth Brainerd, president@SICB.org
In these uncertain times it has been an enormous pleasure to see the superb abstracts submitted for the SICB 2021 virtual meeting. Great science is the hallmark of our annual meetings, and despite everything, this year is no exception!
SICB 2021 will be a 100% virtual meeting, as it is now clear that there will be no possibility for in-person events at our Washington DC venue. Like many of us, I’m sad about not getting to see everyone in person, but I’m also excited about the opportunities offered by a virtual meeting. We have decided to break out of the typical 5-day meeting format and run SICB 2021 over a two month period from January 3rd to February 28th. The goal is to maximize participation by offering flexibility for people attending from time zones worldwide and for all of us who have exceptional family, personal and professional challenges this year.
The first five days of the meeting will be the most intense, with live-streaming symposia, student prize sessions and plenary events. These will all be recorded for on-demand viewing. Contributed oral and poster presentations will be available on demand throughout the two month period and there will be extensive opportunities for “live” (Zoom) interactions as well as text-based chat conversations. SICB has selected Pathable as the virtual meeting platform for SICB 2021 with integrated Zoom for webinars and meetings. No platform has all of the features we would like, but we think Pathable is the best for promoting exciting interactions and networking opportunities across the two months of SICB 2021. In short, SICB 2021 is still your SICB meeting with the same outstanding science, but with more flexibility and opportunities for broader participation.
In other good news, SICB expects to incur no financial penalties for cancelling our in-person meeting. I am deeply grateful to our management company, Burk and Associates Inc., and particularly Brett Burk and Lori Strong, for their work keeping collaborative lines of communication open with the venue and parent company. It is through their excellent work and advice that SICB has been spared from paying the meeting-cancellation penalties that some other societies have incurred.
Support for the SICB Community during COVID
SICB is working hard to support its members through this difficult year. We recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted many aspects of science, from collaboration to research productivity. We also recognize that the burden of COVID-19 in our community has fallen disproportionately on female and BIPOC scientists. Our existing efforts to support our members are summarized in the list below; please also reach out to SICB leadership if you have additional suggestions.
SICB 2021 Annual Meeting
- 100% Virtual format: our most accessible meeting ever!
- Late-Breaking Abstract Submission Window (Oct 8-Oct 28; now closed) for scientists who experienced research delays or other constraints.
- Reduced Registration Rates: Registration rates for the virtual meeting are lower for all, relative to an in-person meeting, and there are additional reduced rates for members attending from low or lower-middle income countries.
- Waived 3x limit for Mangum Student Support: Mangum support this year for meeting registration fees will not count toward the usual limit of three times.
Teaching during the Pandemic: Resources from the SICB Education Council
- Database of resources for online instruction
- Database of guest lecturers
- Teaching circles: Discussion groups for specific classes (contact lwhitena@allegheny.edu)
Flexibility and Support for Journal Authors
ICB and IOB have worked hard to support and accommodate authors impacted by COVID with flexible deadlines and frequent check-ins.
Telling Stories and Raising Awareness
SICB has been using the ICB and IOB blogs to tell stories about the struggles scientists face this year during COVID, and to raise awareness about the additional challenges faced by BIPOC members of our community. We have also been using @SICBtweets to amplify the voices of SICB members, particularly early early career and BIPOC/underrepresented scientists.
Message from the Communications Editor
Molly Jacobs, Comm.Editor@SICB.org
For me, SICB is like a beacon – a yearly reminder of why I fell in love with science in the first place. SICB has

been my home meeting since I first attended as an undergraduate – I crept in and out of dimly lit rooms with fantastic images on the screens, and was shocked and elated when the people in my literature cited section turned out to be real live people walking through the corridors. Since that time, it has shaped my career as a scientist, educator, and science communicator. I am honored to serve as SICB’s first Communications Editor, and I want to make sure that SICB remains an inspiring, supportive home for all scientists – particularly those who are early career or coming from diverse communities.
This is a new position within SICB leadership. I’ll be working hard to keep SICB members informed, to make it easier to navigate SICB communications, and to develop a communications strategy to help SICB strengthen its connections with current members and reach new audiences. I’m particularly excited to be working with Lou Burnett, a fantastic committee of SICB members, and our partners at Knockmedia to design a new website for SICB! Stay tuned for more information on this long-overdue project.
If anyone reading this is on the fence about #SICB2021, come to the meeting! It is going to be the highlight of an otherwise dark and difficult year for so many of us. In addition to all the fantastic science and networking opportunities, it will be a chance for us to share and talk about the challenges we have faced as scientists in 2020, and come up with ways to support each other in 2021.
Message from the SICB Website Redesign Committee
New SICB Website Coming Soon! The springtime will bring some hope of relief from the COVID-19 pandemic and a fresh new look for SICB’s website. The SICB website is rich in content and was last overhauled in 2007. The redesign process started two years ago with a committee of SICB members giving their thoughts and ideas for what makes an effective website for an organization such as SICB. Since that time, the website has continued to evolve to serve the membership of SICB.

During the summer of 2020, SICB contracted with KnockMedia to design a new look for the website that is better organized, easier to access, and friendly to mobile devices. A new group of individuals selected from representative SICB committees and the leadership of SICB is working with KnockMedia to bring about these significant changes.
We are thankful to the members of the original SICB web committee named here: Lou Burnett, SICB Past President; Alice Gibb, SICB Secretary ; Heide Rohland, BAI; Ruedi Birenheide, SICB Webmaster; Thom Sanger, Public Affairs Committee; Karen Burnett, Development Committee; Bram Lutton, Educational Council; Brian Tsukimura, Broadening Participation Committee; Marianne Porter, Membership Committee ; Ariel Kahrl, Student Postdoctoral Affairs Committee; and Suzanne Austin, Student Postdoctoral Affairs Committee.
A new group will take the redesign across the finish line in 2021: Noah Bressman, Lou Burnett, Jill Drupa, Molly Jacobs, Michele Johnson, Gabe Rivera, Adam Summers, and Susan Williams
We thank everyone involved for their efforts and constructive feedback!
Message from the Program Officer
Jake Socha, Program.Officer@SICB.org

As with every other aspect of life, the COVID crisis has forced us to improvise, and we have been working on #SICB2021 since March. The initial idea, obviously scrapped by circumstance, was to hold a hybrid conference, with an online portion augmented by an in-person experience. Recently, we decided on an online conference vendor, enabling us to blaze forward with an all-virtual conference. Although there is no way to fully replicate the in-person experience, we see a silver lining—the virtual nature of this conference is an opportunity to increase access and equitability. With content available online throughout the months of January and February (two months of “SICB season”!), folks from around the world will have an opportunity to experience our integrative organismal science and connect personally with presenters and attendees. There are other advantages as well. In a ‘normal’ year, it’s almost impossible to catch all the presentations of interest, because so many things are going on concurrently. This year, not only will you not miss a thing, you can binge on-demand at your leisure, on days of your choosing, even in your pajamas with a bowl of ice cream. And think of the hassles you won’t have to deal with: Flu? Missing luggage? Child care? (Ok, maybe that last one is worse now — we feel for you, parents!)
We currently have 1,701 presentations. In normal times, we program about the same number of contributed talks and posters, but this year talks outweigh posters by 3 to 1 (1,162 to 397, to be exact). To give presenters flexibility, we are offering formats of either 6-minute or 12-minute talks. In addition to pre-recorded video for talks and PDF files for posters, we hope to offer the ability to upload supplemental files. Specific guidance on how to compose talks and posters for the online format will be provided on the SICB website sometime in November, which will help people prepare for the required upload in December (exact date TBD). We are also excited about the online commenting feature, which will enable attendees to provide input and ask questions, and for presenters to respond, throughout the SICB season.
You might have noticed a new, late-breaking abstract submission window that was open until October 28. We decided to accept additional abstracts not because of low numbers, but because we wanted to give folks who might have missed the first deadline, for any number of reasons, a second chance to submit. This second submission is a one-time thing, just for this year. Even if you are not presenting, spread the word and invite folks to attend SICB — the funding and travel-related barriers of a normal conference are much lower this year.
Many people have been asking about the schedule. Here’s the general layout. We’ll kick off the meeting on January 3 in an exciting way with the Best Student Presentation competition sessions, to give our students the front-row honor they deserve. All contributed talks and posters will also be released, available on-demand through the end of February. From January 4 to 7, we’ll have only symposia, plenaries, and networking opportunities, showcasing these events. This year’s lineup symposia promises something for everyone, with a diverse range of topics including social communication, canine science (dogs!), light pollution, and comparative studies of manakins, a fascinating group of birds. Check out the full list of the 12 symposia here. All else will occur after the 7th—workshops, division business meetings, socials, and sundry. In February, we’ll have live Zoom discussions for each contributed talk and poster session, to enable you to interact directly with presenters about their science. We will end February with two special sessions for evolutionary biologist George Gilchrist and botanist Vicki Funk, whose lives, legacies, and memories we honor. Overall, we hope that this plan provides a balance of highlighting specific events while keeping interest and energy high, and helping to reduce screen fatigue and burnout. Stay tuned for the official program schedule to be posted online in the coming weeks—we will make specific details of timing available as they are finalized.

Lastly, let’s congratulate this year’s award winners: Roz Dakin for the Bartholomew Award, Michaela Hau for the Bern Award, Sara Hiebert Burch for the Morse Award, and Martha Muñoz for the Gans Award. We’re looking forward to seeing all of them at #SICB2021! We’re also excited about this year’s Moore Lecture, which will be given by social psychologist Claude Steele. You may recognize him from his popular book, “Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do.”
Workshops are still being developed, but we have some on the books already. Among others, look forward to two (not just one!) Teaching and Learning X (TAL-X) workshops put on by the Ed Council, a SlicerMorph 3D analysis workshop led by Kelly Diamond, and a workshop put on by the Public Affairs Committee. Workshops will be run through the online platform using Zoom. If you have an idea for a workshop, please submit it using this form by the end of November.
Another difference (among so many) this year is that we will have session chairs for both talk and poster sessions. Our Session Chairs will help moderate posted comments to make sure that our written communications remain respectful and appropriate, and they will also help to organize the live discussion sessions. We thank you in advance for this major service!
Social events are still being planned. Janet Steven is leading the effort to come up with creative and fun ways for us to interact in the absence of actual presence. Thanks also to co-organizers Morgan Furze, Katherine Corn, and Caitlin Gabor. If you have ideas, we’re all ears. Please let us know using this short survey: https://forms.gle/jgk6bnHC49sncAoz5
The Program Committee has been meeting since May to put together a program that best suits everyone’s needs. It’s been an all-hands-on-deck situation, and we’ve received input from many people beyond the committee as well, from members to Executive Officers. We are truly grateful for all of your insight and help. The Program Committee includes myself, Thom Sanger (Program Officer-Elect), Kathleen Lynch (DAB), Janet Steven (DOB), Matt McHenry (DCB), Brian Walker (DCE), Kristi Montooth (DCPB), Matt Rockman (DEDB), Cynthia Downs (DEDE), Sarah Diamond (DEE), Karen Chan (DIZ), Jeff Riffell (DNNSB), Todd Oakley (DPCB), Mason Dean (DVM), Brian Tsukimura (AMS), and John Zardus (TCS). We were also joined by Misty Paig-Tran and James Murray from the Public Affairs Committee, who helped compile suggestions for presentations to include in SICB press releases, and by ICB Editor-in-Chief Ulrike Muller. We also thank Lori Strong and Stacey Haines for their invaluable work behind the scenes. Please make sure to thank these folks for their efforts in making this virtual annual meeting a success.
Message from the Treasurer

Miriam Ashley-Ross, Treasurer@SICB.org
2020 is challenging on many fronts, and SICB’s finances are no exception. Probably the question that is uppermost on everyone’s mind is, “Is SICB going to survive in this COVID/virtual meeting only environment?” The short answer is Yes! While the uncertainty is stressful, and for a long time we weren’t sure whether we were going to be virtual-only or have a hybrid/partially in-person meeting next January, as time has passed the picture has clarified, and the Executive Officers have been working hard to prepare for all eventualities and make sure that SICB can weather this storm.
Before I go into more detail about the financial picture for the virtual meeting, I want to set the stage by describing where we were before the chaos started. It’s hard to remember a time pre-COVID, but over half of our fiscal year 2020 (July 1, 2019 — June 30, 2020) encompassed normal times, including the January in-person meeting in Austin, TX. Most of our revenue and expenses happen surrounding the annual meeting, because the majority of members renew their membership at the same time that the register for the annual meeting. So from a financial standpoint, most of our data is in after February. There are of course a few items that come straggling in later, but we have a fairly accurate picture of where we’re going to stand at that time. Following the close of the fiscal year, an annual review of the Society’s finances is conducted. While that has not been completed yet, it is clear that the SICB leadership and BAI are fulfilling our aims of accurately predicting our expenses and revenue so that the Society remains (just barely) in the black. We try to set membership and annual meeting registration fees so that we break even, rather than overcharge the membership and build up assets through annual charges. The annual meeting is the biggest factor in our finances, and the 2020 Austin meeting was an unqualified success; it collected a total of $476,834 in revenue (larger than our projection of $444,700), while expenses were $423,417. During the Austin meeting, the Executive Committee set a FY2021 budget, which assumed that we would have an in-person meeting in Washington, DC. Meeting location matters — the figures from the Tampa meeting were $50,000+ less than for the San Francisco meeting, on both the revenue and expense sides. Burk and Associates, Inc. works very hard to get SICB good deals on meeting locations and venues. Nonetheless, due to increased costs associated with the meeting, the Executive Committee had to vote to increase membership dues by a modest amount to offset these.

Fast-forward to Fall 2020, when it became clear that SICB was going to have to shift to an entirely virtual model for the January 2021 annual meeting. A number of decisions had to be made – how were we going to deliver the talks? How long should the talks be? Would we have posters? What sort of interactions were we going to have between presenters and audience, and for how long? We settled on the format that our Program Officer describes, and then the executive officers and BAI started shopping around for a company that could provide the platform. We also tried to make an educated guess as to how many meeting attendees we’d get. All of the decisions made affect the projected cost, and potential revenue, of the meeting. While it seems obvious that attending a virtual meeting is (and should be) less expensive than an in-person meeting, there are still very real costs associated with putting it on. We have tried to set registration fees at reasonable levels for what is being provided (2 months of access and interactions puts us on the most generous end of the virtual meeting spectrum), and to get SICB just into the black if we have typical numbers of attendees. At the same time, we understand that the research programs of many researchers (professors and students alike) have been drastically curtailed by COVID restrictions, and so have put in place a very forgiving cancellation policy. But we really hope that you’ll all attend, even if the research you’re presenting isn’t in as finished a form as you’d like! We are working hard to make this virtual meeting a dynamic and accessible event – it’s unavoidably going to be different than the usual, but we’re confident that you’ll find it a rewarding experience. I hope to be able to tell you next Spring that it was an unqualified success. Please attend and support your fellow SICB members, and the Society as a whole! —Respectfully submitted, Miriam Ashley-Ross, SICB Treasurer
Message from the Secretary (and Secretary-Elect)
Alice Gibb, Secretary@SICB.org and Michele Johnson, Secretary-Elect@SICB.org

It’s time to reintroduce everyone to Michele Johnson, the current Secretary-Elect and the incoming SICB Secretary — as of January of 2021! She has already been doing much of the official SICB work related to bylaws and is ready to step in and take on the elections and newsletter communications in the upcoming year. Speaking of bylaws and elections, we have a few announcements to make.
First, SICB recently passed several bylaws changes to allow all members of the Society to vote in elections, allow Postdoctoral Members to hold office, rename the membership category for undergraduate and high school students, and remove limits on the duration of time a membership category may be held. In addition, these bylaw changes also eliminated the requirement that students be sponsored by a full member. Instead, when a student submits an abstract, they will be prompted to provide the email address of their research advisor, who will receive an alert that the abstract was submitted. Language has also been changed to allow ALL members (including student members) to present one poster and one oral presentation at a meeting. Speaking on behalf of the executive officers, we feel these changes will demonstrate our collective support for our student members and remove potential barriers to their success.
Second, the nominating committee for the spring 2021 elections has been formed. At the society-wide level, we are seeking candidates for Program-Officer Elect (term as Program-Officer Elect to begin January 2022) and Member at Large (term as Member at Large to begin January 2022). If you are an interested candidate, or you know someone who might be willing to run for election, please send this information to the chair of the society-wide nominating committee, former SICB Program Officer and SICB member par excellence, Susan Williams (chair.nominating@sicb.org). My own experience being an officer for SICB has been that it is both fun and fascinating, so I encourage other members to consider becoming involved in SICB leadership.
Message from the ICB Editor
Ulrike Müller, editor.icb@sicb.org

ICB collaborates with Jumpstart – Reintegrating Biology. Integrative and Comparative Biology is proud to announce its collaboration with Jumpstart – Reintegrating Biology. Last year, this NSF-funded initiative held townhall events across the US, which resulted in more than 60 vision papers available on the Jumpstart website (link: https://reintegratingbiology.org/vision-papers/). ICB is currently collaborating with the authors of those papers to develop these brief vision papers into Perspective papers for ICB. Our goal is to share with our community what biologists identified as the most interesting or compelling questions that might be tackled by integrating disparate sub-disciplines of biology. These manuscripts are planned to be published in the 2021 issue.
Call to Action for Equity and Inclusion. Integrative and Comparative Biology is grateful to its authors for their dedication and hard work to see their manuscripts through in these trying times. ICB would like to renew its call to action for equity and inclusion. We are grateful to our SICB members Janneke Schwaner and Brooke Flammang for picking up the torch and publishing a study in this year’s ICB entitled ‘Parenting Through Academia as a SICB Member’, based on a workshop plus survey among our SICB members (link: https://academic.oup.com/icb/article-abstract/60/3/549/5864029).
We would like to renew last year’s call to action for 2021. With COVID 19 negatively affecting the career trajectories and productivity of many of us, ICB is looking for ways to support its authors. We invite manuscripts, such as Perspectives and Reviews. We also invite Policy papers that align with ICB’s call to action. We are interested in Op-Eds, Perspectives, Reviews, and original research manuscripts that address or that arise from the impact of COVID 19 and BLM on our community. We welcome Op-Eds that share with us your experiences and perspectives. We welcome all thoughts and suggestions on how we can increase equity and inclusion, and on how we can better support our authors. Please don’t hesitate to contact Ulrike Müller or any ICB editor with ideas, suggestions, and concerns. And if you have the time, interest, and energy, please consider joining us in forming a task force of equity and inclusion. You can express your interest by completing the Google form (link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSekqA64gFC-z6CIMEeqTh5d8mUJiiHZfhUNyPR5OVnbZVXvNQ/viewform?usp=pp_url)
Message from the IOB Editor
A.P. Summers, editor.iob@sicb.org

Our new open access journal continues to grow, with representation from every SICB division. We are recruiting new Associate Editors and Outreach Associates, so please get in touch if you are interested in either of these roles. We are particularly interested in more manuscripts from the new Division of Botany. Send us your manuscripts, every one helps support the society. When your manuscript is published we do our best to make sure it is well launched into the world of social and conventional media. The average AltMetric impact factor for IOB is higher than any other pure biology journal! In our first year and a half we have more than a dozen papers with AltMetric scores above 100 and one has been featured as a breakout story on the AltMetric site. The Outreach Associates will expertly craft a blog entry to support the publication of your article, broadening the awareness of your work in both the scientific community and among the general public. Abstracts translated into as many languages as we (and you) can find are another way to increase the worldwide appreciation of your science. To ensure Integrative Organismal Biology continues to grow we need you to keep sending us your great manuscripts!
Message from the Broadening Participation Committee
Rita Mehta, Chair

The goal of the Broadening Participation (BP) committee is to increase the equity, inclusion, and diversity of SICB and the field of integrative biology for people at all career stages, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability/disability, and socioeconomic background. The BP committee works to increase the diversity of SICB by providing travel awards to help underrepresented attendees defray the costs of attending the annual meeting, hosting workshops, seminars, supporting a mentor-mentee program, and hosting a social at the annual meeting.
With even greater purpose, over the summer and into the Fall, the Broadening Participation committee has been collectively working on initiatives and ideas that we hope will result in greater equity, inclusivity, and broader diversity in SICB. Our current committee members recognized that we needed initiatives that also acknowledged and celebrated members who have been making concerted efforts to break down systemic institutional barriers that prohibit talented and motivated students from entering, staying, and thriving in STEM disciplines. With our efforts we hope to improve the annual conference and the society at large. Some initiatives that we continue to develop can be implemented soon while others are long term. As the Chair, I truly thank my committee members for their unwavering support and time. I also thank the Executive Committee for their support on these initiatives as they were busy planning a virtual annual meeting.
One major accomplishment of the BP Committee was redesigning the application for the BP Travel Awards. This upcoming year, these awards will be known as “Professional Development Awards” to better fit our virtual SICB meeting in 2021. The application now contains prompts that will make it easier for applicants to complete and for reviewers to evaluate, and it no longer requires letters of recommendation. This year, the awards will be for up to $300 dollars, and in the application, we request that applicants make the case for how the funds will enable them to attend and facilitate their participation in the virtual meeting. We expect the new application will help the funds reach a wider range of SICB attendees who are making important contributions to the diversity of SICB’s meetings. The application for the Professional Development Awards can be accessed here or check the BP webpage on the SICB website (via the Committees tab).

The Mentor-Mentee Program remains one of our most popular programs and often results in long-lasting connections between mentors and mentees. In response to SICB 2021’s virtual platform, we are modifying the Mentor-Mentee Program to extend beyond the typical January 3-7 meeting period. We hope the virtual platform and extended program time for SICB 2021 will make people more enthusiastic about participating in the program. We tailored the program’s registration survey to gather other types of information, such as time zone, that will help us minimize logistical barriers for each mentor-mentee pairing. Participating in the BP mentorship program as a mentor is one way you can show your support and actively make our society more equitable and inclusive. Participating in the BP mentorship program as a mentee can help you get more out of the annual meeting experience and facilitate enduring research and mentorship connections. To participate, please just check the box expressing your interest on our SICB registration page and I will send you the formal survey used for the match. Please make sure you register for the annual meeting preferably by Sunday November 29th as the survey for the Mentor-Mentee program is due Monday, November 30th at midnight, EST. This provides BP with the appropriate time to make the matches and notify our participants.
In another new initiative, the BP Committee created a comprehensive demographics survey to quantify the current diversity of attendees at the annual SICB meeting. The survey was designed to collect demographic information that has traditionally been left off previous demographics surveys but that is central to describing the identities of SICB attendees. We will use these data to plan future workshops and other resources that reflect the needs and intersectionality of our societal membership. An important component of this new survey is the transparency in how the data are collected, stored, and used: data will be collected without any personally identifiable information (e.g., name, institution), maintained in a secure database by the BP chair, and used only for internal program evaluation. We hope that this transparency will increase the survey’s response rates, which will improve our ability to serve the diverse groups at SICB meetings.
If you have any questions or are interested in helping or joining BP, please contact the Chair of the committee (rmehta2@ucsc.edu). All SICB members are welcome and encouraged to attend BP events and participate in BP programming during the annual meeting. Please see http://www.sicb.org/meetings/bp/ for further information about our programs.
Message from the Student-Postdoctoral Affairs Committee
John R. Hutchinson, Chair of SPDAC, chair.spdac@sicb.org
SPDAC has continued with plans for SICB2021. These include: (1) another (virtual) “booth” with new “How-

To” Brochures for all members/attendees (also to be put on the website at https://sicb.burkclients.com/resources/studentpostdoc.php3; bottom of page) and some kind of chat rooms for discussions with our Reps, as well as our usual posters with tips, and maybe a “jobs board” and (2) another (virtual) roundtable workshop for students and postdocs to discuss major issues with expert panelists, themed “Transferable skills in academia and non-academia”. We are aiming for diverse experts from a broad range of backgrounds and skills, to serve our members. Current thinking is that we will start with a 30min panel (all experts) discussion about transferable skills in general, then expert-led 60min focused roundtable sessions; this will depend on SICB’s virtual platform.
We remain active at https://twitter.com/SICB_SPDAC; less so at https://www.facebook.com/sicbspdac. We welcome ideas on how we (me as Chair and your 12 divisional reps– see SICB link above for names/contact info) can best serve you, whether at SICB2021 or other times.
Message from the Education Council
Lisa Whitenack, Educational Council Chair, Chair.EdCouncil@sicb.org

The Educational Council has been hard at work supporting SICB members in this time of pandemic pedagogy. We continue to provide COVID-19 teaching support through maintaining databases for resources for online biology instruction, online guest lecturers, and SICB’s Research and Education Resources library. We are also sorting through the almost 50 responses to our teaching circle interest form and are finalizing the scheduling of the first meeting for each group.
At the same time, the Ed Council is preparing for the 2021 annual meeting. We are supporting a great symposium “Biology beyond the classroom: Experiential learning through authentic research, design, and community engagement.” We have two great TAL-X workshops in the works for you: one on integrative creative writing into your courses (led by Chris Gillen) and one on “Biomaking” and community partnership (led by Ali Hansen, Corrine Takara, and BioJam teens). We’ve also selected our Moore Lecturer and are working on those details. Stay tuned for more information on all of these exciting developments!
Finally, it is my pleasure to announce this year’s winner of the M. Patricia Morse Award for Excellence and Innovation in Science Education, Dr. Sara Hiebert Burch of Swarthmore College. Dr. Hiebert Burch’s nominators write “Sara’s excellence as an educator stems from how she thoroughly and intentionally embraced the process of scientific inquiry and application of educational research within her teaching practice. Sara has published and presented much of this teaching work for the benefit of science educators beyond her home institution. Simply put, she is an exemplary teacher-scholar.” Congratulations, Dr. Hiebert Burch!
Fall 2020 DAB
Message from DAB Leadership
We are looking forward to our first completely virtual meeting this coming January. While we will miss seeing you all in person, we look forward to connecting virtually, and to welcoming attendees who would perhaps not be able to attend an in-person meeting. We hope folks will participate in several opportunities through the DAB, especially those events that support our students and early career members! Please join us for the following:

- DAB Mentoring Program: After a successful first year in January 2020, we are holding a virtual mentoring program this year. PLEASE SIGN UP TO BE MENTORED OR TO MENTOR! In an effort to help DAB members, especially students, get broader perspectives and advice we are organizing a mentoring program in which matched teams will communicate before, during, and after the meeting. The topic of mentoring can be broad, so please sign up, using this form, by December 1. Even if you can’t participate, sharing this information with trainees and through social media is a huge help. More details are on the sign up form.
- Student talk and poster awards: These sessions highlight the best work our students are doing, so they are about a lot more than just the competition. See below for our Zuk Award Finalists! Please attend these events to support our students and consider volunteering to judge them.
- Building community: Please join us for our DAB Members Meeting (previously the Business Meeting but it’s meant for everyone to join!). Our Members Meeting is a chance to learn more about the DAB and find a way to be a part of our group, and it is open to everyone. We are not an elitist group – we want input and help from members at all career stages and from diverse backgrounds and areas of interest!
- Organizing symposia: Because we are so integrative, our division supports a lot of symposia. (Check out the list of symposia at our upcoming virtual meeting!) However, we have relatively few symposia that are focused on behavior. If you have ideas for a symposium for the 2022 meeting that would focus on behavior please contact our Program Officer, Kathleen Lynch. Organizing a symposium can be a great way to highlight your work, and all symposium papers are published in Integrative and Comparative Biology.
Adult superb starling (photo credit
Sarah Guindre-Parker) - Leadership opportunities: Please consider nominating yourself or someone else for the position of DAB Chair or Student or Postdoc representative. These are outstanding opportunities for students and early career members to build their network and service portfolio.
- Events for students and post-docs: The Student/Post Affairs Committee (SPDAC) will be hosting a virtual booth which will have “How-To” brochures (downloadable PDFs) on a wide range of topics. You can also stop by the booth during our “Office Hours” to ask any questions (time TBD). Further, SPDAC will be holding a virtual workshop focused on “Transferable Skills”, with the opportunity for students/postdocs to talk with a panel of scientists coming from a wide range of career paths. Hope to see you there!
Zuk Award Finalists
Eight students have been selected to compete in this year’s Marlene Zuk Award for Best Student Presentation. Our judging panel, composed of the DAB executive committee, Secretary-elect Allison Welch, and graduate student/postdoc rep Sydney Hope selected these finalists on the basis of their extended abstracts. The finalists are (in alphabetical order): Benjamin Buford, Casey Coomes, Jennifer Fortunato, Elizabeth George, Matthew LeFauve, Sarah Manka-Worthington, Madeleine Ostwald, and Bethany Williams. These students will each present the results of their research in a special “Zuk Award” virtual session. Please join us in congratulating these finalists!
Welcome DAB’s Incoming Secretary, Allison Welch!

It is our pleasure to welcome Allison Welch as the incoming DAB Secretary. Allison is an Associate Professor of Biology and the Director of Environmental and Sustainability Studies minor at College of Charleston. She was DAB’s Program Officer from 2010-2016, and served on the SICB Student Support Committee from 2007-2009, and the SICB Nominating Committee in 2009. She looks forward to promoting community within DAB, and to supporting our students, post-docs, and early-career scientists.
From our virtual settings in Arkansas, New York, and Virginia to yours, we send our support and look forward to seeing you all in January!
— Kendra Sewall (Chair.DAB@sicb.org); Kathleen Lynch (DPO.DAB@sicb.org); Erica Westerman (Secretary.DAB@sicb.org); Sydney Hope (Student Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative)
Fall 2020 DCB
Table of Contents
Message from the Chair
Stacey Combes, chair.dcb@sicb.org
During this unusual and challenging year, my fellow DCB committee members — John Long, Emily Kane, Matt McHenry, Armita Manafzadeh, and I are all looking forward to January, when we hope to see a great turnout from the DCB community for this year’s remote SICB meeting. Although this meeting will be different, it is an important time for us to come together to talk about the science that we all care about, and to support our younger colleagues, for whom every annual conference is an important step in their career journey. We are especially looking forward to Sunday, January 3rd, when our DCB Best Student Paper competition will be held, with live introductions and a chance to interact with each student after their talk is streamed. Please see below for the list of this year’s Best Student Paper competitors.
Carl Gans Award Winner

We’re also excited to celebrate this year’s Carl Gans Award winner, Martha Muñoz from Yale University! Martha was inspired early on by Gans’ pioneering insights into evolutionary physiology and biomechanics. Her research integrates top-down macroevolutionary approaches with mechanistic bottom-up approaches, to reveal emergent phenomena and general principles in ecology and evolution. Martha has explored the roles of thermoregulation in the evolution of lizards and mechanical “rules” of form-function evolution in four-bar linkage systems. Her lab’s current work examines topics such as hidden dimensions of diversity in woodland salamanders and physiological perspectives on the evolution of live birth.
Martha was chosen from an incredibly competitive pool of Gans Award applicants this year – in total, we had 14 amazing applicants for the Young Investigator category, who have amassed over 260 publications, conducted research around the world, and represent a vibrant future for the field of comparative biomechanics. In addition, the Gans Award committee commented that the strongest applicants not only had outstanding research track records and high quality journal publications, but also had excellent records of mentoring, community engagement, and service, with a clear focus on equity and inclusion in science. After reviewing these applications, the committee felt it was quite clear that an award for “contributions to the field of comparative biomechanics” recognizes not only outstanding research, but also mentoring, outreach, and efforts to improve equity in the scientific community. We are hopeful that many of the outstanding applicants from this year will re-apply for the award again next year. We would also like to thank the three Carl Gans Award committee members, led by committee chair Marianne Porter, for their hard work on these difficult deliberations.
Best Student Paper Competition
With this year’s remote format, we did not receive enough entries to hold a competition for the Stephen Vogel Award for Best Student Poster in Biomechanics, but we look forward to hearing talks from the finalists for the The Mimi A.R. Koehl and Stephen A. Wainwright Award for Best Student Presentation in Biomechanics:
- Benjamin Cellini (The Pennyslvania State University)
- Callie Crawford (New Jersey Institute of Technology)
- Natsuki Harada (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
- Yordano Jimenez (Brown University)
- Anthony Lapsansky (University of Montana)
- Armita Manafzadeh (Brown University)
- Stephanie Ross (Simon Fraser University)
- Wael Salem (The Pennsylvania State University)
Please mark your calendars for Sunday, January 3rd, when you will have a chance to hear talks by these up-and-coming young biomechanists, and to engage with them live about their research.
DCB Officers and Upcoming Elections
After this year’s meeting, John Long will take over as chair and Brooke Flammang will become the incoming chair-elect for DCB. Emily Kane, Matt McHenry, and Armita Manafzadeh will continue in their roles as Secretary, Program Officer, and Student-Postdoc Representative, respectively. This Spring, DCB will hold elections for two positions on our committee – Secretary and Program Officer. If you would like to nominate yourself or one of your colleagues, please email David Hu (hu@me.gatech.edu), who will be serving as Chair of the Nominating Committee.
Message from the Program Officer
Matt McHenry, dpo.dcb@sicb.org
Symposia: We are on track to continue supporting diverse and interesting symposia for this year’s meeting. Here are the topics that DCB and DVM are sponsoring for SICB 2021:
- An Evolutionary Tail: Evo-Devo, Structure, and Function of Post-Anal Appendages: Janneke Schwaner, Tonia Hsieh, Craig McGowan
- Biology Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning through Authentic Research, Design, and Community Engagement: Ali Hansen, Lisa Whitenack, Patrice Connors, Hayley Lanier
- Bridging Disciplinary Gaps to Advance Canine Science: Caleb Bryce, Ana Jimenez
- Metachronal Coordination of Multiple Appendages for Swimming and Pumping: Margaret Byron, David Murphy, Arvind Santhanakrishnan
- Physical Mechanisms of Behavior: Patrick Green, Alejandro Rico-Guevara
- The Biology of Sticky: Adhesive Silk, Fiber, and Glue Biomaterials Across Eukaryota: Mercedes Burns, Sarah Stellwagen

The Program Officers have yet to decide the symposia for 2022. Symposium proposals were down this year, perhaps due to COVID. We would all like to see a return to form next year with a strong batch of submissions. Symposia are essential to the society and remain a great opportunity to gather a stellar group of speakers and to see that work published in ICB. So, please consider organizing a symposium for SICB 2023 in Austin, TX. The deadline for a symposium proposal will be in August, though you will want to start planning soon. If you have some potential ideas, then do not hesitate to contact me with your thoughts (dpo.dcb@sicb.org). Here are some guidelines for what’s involved when organizing a symposium: https://tinyurl.com/tkudwnr
Once SICB members have submitted their symposium ideas, then I will be involved with deciding which ones to approve and grant DCB support. Please help guide me through this process by taking about one minute to fill out the following survey, which indicates the kind of symposium that you would like to attend or maybe organize yourself: https://forms.gle/x39MhJLtJKyzgyyW6
Message from the Secretary
Emily Kane, secretary.dcb@sicb.org
I know we have a lot on our plates this semester, so I’ll keep this short.
- Pandemic teaching resources: The SICB Education Council has been coordinating several initiatives to assist members with virtual teaching challenges due to the pandemic. You have probably seen emails from SICB recently, but I want to point it out again. Specifically, they are managing lists of online resources (here) and guest lectures (here). If you would like to add information to either of these lists, contact them directly (edcouncil@sicb.org).
- Upcoming elections: We will soon be soliciting nominations for incoming DCB Program Officer and Secretary. These positions will be held from January 2022 through January 2023. The Program Officer coordinates the programs of the division, including the annual meeting talks and presentations and the best student paper competitions. The Secretary acts as the divisional record-keeper and editor for the biennial newsletter. Currently, Divisional Officers must hold either Full or Emeritus membership status. If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague for either of these positions, please contact the Nominating Committee Chair, Dr. David Hu (hu@me.gatech.edu).
- 2021 Member’s meeting: Be on the lookout for information regarding the 2021 Virtual DCB Member’s Meeting. In addition to reviewing the business of the society (including voting to approve the 2020 Member’s Meeting minutes), this is an opportunity to raise questions or voice concerns about the Division, make or hear announcements about upcoming opportunities, and interact with your colleagues in a more informal setting. Members at any career stage are welcome and encouraged to join! We look forward to “seeing” everyone soon!
As always, if you have any questions or announcements that you would like to convey to the Division, please send me an email!
Message from the Student and Postdoctoral Representative
Armita Manafzadeh, armita@brown.edu
Hello DCB! I hope everyone is doing as well as possible. Even though I can’t see you all in person this year, I’m looking forward to learning about all of your wonderful work at our Virtual Annual Meeting.
We might have gone virtual, but the SICB Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC) is still preparing a roundtable workshop featuring representatives from a variety of alt-ac career paths, such as museums, data science, science communication, and more. We’ll also have a virtual booth with plenty of handy how-to brochures on topics like writing research statements applying for fellowships, so be sure to check those out.

As a reminder, my role as the DCB Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Representative is to serve as (1) a liaison between the student and postdoctoral members of our division and the division leadership, and (2) an advocate for the amazing research you’re all doing.
So students and postdocs, please feel free to contact me by email (armita@brown.edu) or Twitter (@armanafzadeh) with your suggestions, comments, concerns, or SICB-related feedback, and I’ll be happy to pass them along to Stacey, Matt, and Emily.
If you’re on social media, make sure you’re a member of our Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/258733714665123/) and follow our new Twitter handle (@SICB_DCB_DVM — no longer @mechsNmorph!). Please tag @SICB_DCB_DVM in any tweets you’d like me to signal boost to our community, and feel free to ask science and/or logistical questions you might have in our Facebook group.
I’ve had a great time featuring some of our exceptional early career members on the @SICB_DCB_DVM Twitter a part of a #featureFriday series, and would love to keep doing so. If you’re interested in being featured, fill out this survey: https://forms.gle/5Cy51aNvHiqMDMrL6. (Do it, and tell your friends/students/postdocs to do it too!)
“See” you online in January — wishing you all safety and wellness for the rest of your semester!
Fall 2020 DCE
Table of Contents
Message from DCE Leadership
In a normal year, we are usually mid-way through a routine semester by now, experiencing only a normal amount of mid-semester adrenal activation. This is not a normal year, obviously. We have all had to adapt to a new reality, and one of the innumerable things that has had to adjust is the format of the SICB conference, including DCE’s portions. SICB administration and all divisional officers have been spending a great deal of time and effort this year assessing how best to host our 2021 conference. As we move into the fall months, DCE program officer Brian Walker has been working particularly hard to compile a great program that will fit our new virtual format. We expect fewer posters than usual this year, but a full complement of oral presentations. At this writing, we have thirty-seven oral presentations scheduled in four DCE sessions (Stress #1; Stress #2; Reproduction, Growth and Development; and Comparative, Environmental and Behavioral Endocrinology), and fourteen DCE posters. We’re happy to report that we will have plenty of other meeting highlights this year as well, including the following:
DCE is sponsoring or co-sponsoring four symposia at the 2021 conference that will include:
- “Blinded by the Light: Effects of Light Pollution across Diverse Natural Systems” on Monday, Jan. 4th;
- “Biology Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning through Authentic Research, Design, and Community Engagement” on Tuesday, Jan. 5th;
- “Sending and Receiving Signals: Endocrine Modulation of Social Communication” on Wed., Jan 6th;
- “Manakin genomics: comparative studies of evolution and behavior in a unique clade of birds” on Thursday, Jan. 7th.

Mark your calendars for all four days! We encourage you all to attend all these symposia, which will surely be fascinating. Symposia talks will also be available for viewing for several weeks after Jan. 7th.
We are also delighted to confirm that the traditional DCE highlights of the Howard A. Bern Lecture, the Aubrey Gorbman best student talk competition, and the Lynn Riddiford best student poster competition will all be occurring as well, in virtual format. Eight students will be competing for the Gorbman Award, and seven for the Riddiford Award. These student presentations have been scheduled for Sunday, Jan. 3rd. A big thank you goes out to those DCE members who have already agreed to judge the oral and poster competitions. As always, we are always looking for additional volunteers to help with judging — if you are interested in participating as a judge and have not yet reached out, please contact Brian (see email below) for specifics on how to get involved.
For our 2021 Howard A. Bern Lecture, this year we kicked off the nomination process early with a call for nominations during the

DCE business meeting last January in Austin. This approach was a great success; we received 36 nominations, many more than usual, which spanned an incredibly impressive and diverse selection of great scientists. The Bern Nomination Committee (consisting of all DCE officers and officers-elect) thus had a particularly difficult job this year. We are thrilled to announce that our Bern speaker for the 2021 meeting will be Prof. Dr. Michaela Hau. Dr. Hau is based at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany, with over 100 publications to her name and an h-index of 41. Dr. Hau began her career with comparisons of physiological adaptations across species in different environments, but more recently she has focused on quantifying individual variation in endocrinological traits and assessing the fitness consequences of such variation, with the grand goal of assessing how fast physiological systems can evolve. Her study system currently is free-living great tits of Europe, in which she studies variation in corticosterone response to environmental inputs, the resultant effects on traits including reproductive success, as well as linked effects on other traits such as oxidative stress, telomere length, metabolic rate, behavior, and flight performance. Dr. Hau’s presentations are always fascinating, and we are all greatly looking forward to her Bern lecture!
Final details of the rest of the DCE schedule and presentation format are still being decided. There may — there probably will — be some glitches, so we beg your patience as we all navigate the logistics of this new meeting format together. However, though we will all miss seeing our friends and colleagues in person, the virtual format will likely prove to have real benefits as well — among them, the ability to attract participants from far-flung regions of the globe who might not otherwise be able to attend, and additionally the capability to watch the presentations over multiple weeks. (No longer will you have to agonize over missing a talk of great interest due to a schedule conflict!) Stay tuned for additional information from SICB leadership about final schedule format, as well as details about other gatherings that normally occur in person — divisional business meetings, divisional socials and the like. Finally, remember to register early for the 2021 meeting!
We would also like to remind you of some regular DCE business. It’s never too early to submit Bern nominations for the 2022 meeting, as well as symposium ideas for 2023. There are also some DCE officer elections approaching in summer 2021. We will be looking for interested and willing nominees for the positions of DCE secretary-elect and DCE chair-elect. Please consider running for these positions or nominating your deserving colleagues; it’s a great way to connect with colleagues, contribute to your professional community, and learn how your society operates from the inside. Please send any ideas for Bern nominations, symposia, or officer candidates to the DCE Chair, Kathleen Hunt, at Chair.DCE@sicb.org.
One last bit of business — in light of the pandemic and associated dramatic changes in workloads, discussions of possible rebranding of DCE were temporarily tabled during 2020. We look forward to revisiting this issue with all DCE members once 2021 gets underway. We truly hope all DCE members, and their families and friends, are all safe and healthy, and we hope we will see you all — virtually — at our upcoming conference.
Kathleen E. Hunt, Chair, chair.dce@sicb.org; Brian Walker, Program Officer, dpo.dce@sicb.org; Timothy Greives, Secretary, secretary.dce@sicb.org
Message from the Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative
Carla B. Madelaire, carlamadelaire@gmail.com

Hello everyone! I hope you find yourself healthy and safe in this unprecedented difficult year. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us and I sincerely hope that you are adapting and remaining positive. Due to travel restrictions and CDC guidelines, the SICB 2021 in Washington, DC is now going to be held online. This will improve meeting accessibility, inclusion and the opportunity to practice different ways to communicate science and networking. Here are some quick details that could benefit DCE graduate students and postdocs. For more details on each topic, please review the meeting website (http://burkclients.com/sicb/meetings/2021/site/general_info.html).
- Remember to register!! This year the registration fee is substantially less expensive, which will allow more students to participate. SICB also provided even lower rates for people from Low-Income and Lower-Middle Income Economy Countries. If you have a presentation, you MUST register by October 28, 2020 to complete your submission.
- Student awards & support. These include the Charlotte Mangum Student Support Program, Grants-in-Aid of Research, Fellowship of Graduate Student Travel and Dorothy M. Skinner Award. If you missed the deadlines for this year, be sure to apply next year!
- Let’s make good use of social media. Especially during these times where we can’t meet in person, let’s stay connected. If you’re on Facebook, please join the DCE group. It’s a great place to ask questions about your research or material for elaborating endocrinology courses. If you’re on Twitter, please follow the DCE account (@SICB_DCE)! I’m happy to retweet your paper announcements, job inquiries, questions, and also announce SICB related information and deadlines! Just direct message or @ the SICB_DCE. During the meeting, you can follow and live tweet using #SICB2021.
Resources organized by the Student-Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC): The SPDAC provides an interesting and complete list of advice for applying to postdocs, grants and fellowship opportunities that is accessible (http://www.sicb.org/resources/studentpostdoc.php3) with your membership number. They will also organize workshops about different topics in academia and science. Stay tuned to SPDAC twitter (@SICB_SPDAC) and the SICB website for further information on the theme and content of those events.Featured DCE events during online SICB 2021
- Meeting with Comparative Endocrinologist: If you’re interested in networking and career advice, please plan on attending the annual Meeting with a Comparative Endocrinologist. Groups of students will be matched with a comparative endocrinologist for an online networking meeting. This is a great opportunity to meet researchers whose work you are interested in and ask questions about research opportunities, funding, and the job market. Many of the conversations are also an opportunity to help you make an informed decision on pursuing the next step in science. If you’re a professional researcher in comparative endocrinology in academia OR a trained endocrinologist (who is continuing to use your training) outside of academia, and are willing to meet with students, please contact me. Graduate students and postdocs: I will be sending around information about how to participate in this event on twitter and DCE Facebook group.
DCE Data Blitz: I want to be SICB famous! - DCE Data Blitz: Prepare short videos (3 min max, TikTok might be useful here) or funny photos explaining your research, showing your field site or your lab work. I will tweet and post on Facebook during SICB. This is a super cool way to invite people to your talk and to promote yourself, especially during a virtual meeting. I hope everyone can participate!! Best student selected presentations are especially encouraged to participate. Even if you don’t have a twitter or a Facebook account, you can just email me the material and I will put it out there with your name, date and time of presentation. See you all at SICB 2021 virtual meeting!
Fall 2020 DCPB
Table of Contents
Message from the Chair
Ken Welch, Chair.DCPB@sicb.org
I hope this message finds you all safe, healthy, and (as much as can be expected) sane. In such turbulent times, I look forward to something predictable and reassuring: the outstanding work of SICB members will present at the upcoming 2021 virtual meeting! Those working behind the scenes are preparing a relaxed, but feature-packed and engaging meeting.

In 2021, DCPB is strongly represented by over 100 DCPB-related talks and posters and is co-sponsoring 6 symposia. Please see the message from our Program Officer, Kristi Montooth, who will provide more details on what to expect!
First, though, it is my pleasure to announce the winner of the 2021 George Bartholomew Award. DCPB sponsors this premier, society-wide award, recognizing a young investigator for distinguished contributions to comparative physiology and biochemistry or to related fields of functional and integrative biology. The 2021 award winner is Dr. Roslyn Dakin of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Dakin’s work is expansive, ranging from studies on

the biomechanics of bird flight, to the role sensory physiology and ecology in sexual selection, to individual and ecological drivers of social behavior. This work is also truly integrative, involving biomechanics, neuroethology, organismal physiology, and advanced statistical approaches for making sense of large, complex datasets. I’m sure we’re in for a wonderful presentation. I want to thank the chair of this year’s George Bartholomew Award Committee, Kim Hammond (UC Riverside), and members Carol Fasbinder Orth (Creighton U), Cassie Stoddard (Princeton U), Lars Tomanek (Cal Poly SLO), and Blair Wolf (U New Mexico). They reviewed several very strong nominations and provided a carefully considered recommendation. Thank you. I cordially invite you all to celebrate Dr. Dakin and to attend the George Bartholomew Award lecture.
I want to thank Kristi Montooth (University of Nebraska) for her continuing hard work as the DCPB program officer. Planning a large virtual meeting has been a novel and unique challenge, and Kristi and all the people involved have really stepped up to the plate to deliver! The same can be said about the SICB Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC). Leave it to our younger more technologically nimble members to lead the way! Lastly, I want to extend a special thanks to our SPDAC representative, Andrea Rummel (Brown University). Andrea completes her term of service at the end of this upcoming meeting. Thank you for all your hard work Andrea! If you would like to be considered for the next SPDAC rep, please see Andrea’s call below.
Please attend the DCPB 2021 divisional business meeting (exact time to be determined). Don’t be misled, this is more than a ‘business meeting! This is a great opportunity for all DCPB members to engage with the section. We especially encourage a continuing discussion of how we advance the mandate of DCPB during these unusual times. In addition, you’ll hear from the editors of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, and Integrative Biology (our open access journal), who will present the annual reports for their journals. We hope to see you all there. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with your ideas, suggestions, and any questions at Chair.DCPB@sicb.org. I thank you for your support of SICB and look forward to seeing you online in January!
Message from the DCPB Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative
Andrea Rummel, andrea_rummel@brown.edu

SPDAC is working on some exciting ideas for the virtual 2021 annual meeting!
First, we plan to make a number of the “How-To” brochures (e.g., science communication, research and teaching statement design, creating a symposium proposal, getting a post-doc, etc.) that have been written by SPDAC members available online. We will also be contributing to the library of How-To documents with more topics that will be helpful to students and postdocs. If there are any particular topics that you would like to see included, please reach out with suggestions as we want this to be as useful as possible for early career scientists!
Second, we plan to hold a virtual workshop on “Transferable Skills in Academia and non-Academia.” This will likely be set up as a zoom panel and discussion about how to apply skills and experience from one field to another, inside or outside academia. Students will hear from and interact with experts working in fields such as science communication, politics, resource management, etc. We would love your input on this! If you have any suggestions for improvements/things to include for either of these two items, or any other ideas of how to improve our meetings for students and post-docs, please email me (andrea_rummel@brown.edu) or get in touch on twitter.
Finally, DCPB is looking for a new SPDAC rep! If you want to nominate yourself or a student or postdoc, get in touch with our chair Ken Welch at chair.dcpb@sicb.org. Don’t forget to follow DCPB and SPDAC on twitter @sicb_dcpb and @SICB_SPDAC!
Message from the DCPB Secretary
Heather Liwanag, Secretary.DCPB@sicb.org

Times have changed quite a bit since our last newsletter! Now that the conference will be virtual, it’s even more important to maintain our connections digitally. If there is any news you would like to share with the DCPB membership, including job ads, postdoctoral positions, and opportunities for students, please feel free to contact me at Secretary.DCPB@sicb.org. If you would like to see your research highlighted on the SICB website in our Researchers Database, please send me a research picture, a title for the picture/research, and a brief (1-3 sentences) description of your research via e-mail. Examples can be found at http://sicb.org/divisions/DCPB/researchers.php3.
Thanks to all of our members for your continued support of the DCPB. I look forward to seeing all of you virtually in January!
Message from the DCPB Program Officer
Kristi Montooth, DPO.DCPB@sicb.org
Virtual #SICB2021 Meeting Highlights. I write this having just spent a wonderful Saturday on Zoom with the SICB Program Committee. As in so many other aspects of our lives, this was a very different experience from last fall’s planning meeting, as we worked together to plan a virtual conference that will live up to our collective high expectations. The Executive and Program Committees are working hard to organize a virtual meeting that will be enjoyable, meaningful and memorable. There were no post-its, no jostling to get those sessions into just the right room or not scheduled against a society-wide symposium, but there were hundreds of abstracts reporting inspiring research in organismal and integrative biology that is being done by DCPB members. I felt buoyed up by your science and am looking forward to seeing your presentations and engaging with you through virtual coffee hours and social events.

Register for the meeting (http://burkclients.com/sicb/meetings/2021/site/index.html) to watch “live” presentations during the week of Jan 3-7 and access the complete program of recorded presentations, organized into thematic oral and poster sessions, through Feb 28. Engage with presenters throughout this extended virtual meeting by using the chat function associated with each presentation and participating in virtual Q&As that will accompany each thematic session.
DCPB will have a strong representation at the 2021 virtual meeting: DCPB-affiliated abstracts make up just under 10% of those abstracts that listed a division affiliation, with nearly 100 talks and posters spread over 9 oral and 2 poster sessions. 54% of DCPB abstracts were submitted by our graduate student members and undergraduate or high school students! Student members: your research, voice and ideas are important and we encourage your full participation in the Society and Division through voting and attending the DCPB members meeting (date TBA soon).
DCPB is co-sponsoring 6 exciting symposia this year:
- S1 (Jan 4) Blinded by the Light: Effects of Light Pollution across Diverse Natural Systems
- S2 (Jan 4) Genomic Perspectives in Comparative Physiology of Mollusks: Integration across Disciplines
- S4 (Jan 5) Biology Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning through Authentic Research, Design, and Community Engagement
- S7 (Jan 6) The Integrative Biology of Pigment Organelles
- S8 (Jan 6) The Biology of Sticky: Adhesive Silk, Fiber, and Glue Biomaterials Across Eukaryota
- S9 (Jan 6) Sending and Receiving Signals: Endocrine Modulation of Social Communication
- S11 (Jan 7) Biology’s Best Friend: Bridging Disciplinary Gaps to Advance Canine Science
Engaging in our Professional Societies. I have been honored to serve as the DCPB PO for the past two years. Engaging in the science and success of my professional societies has been the service that I most enjoy, and I would encourage you to become more involved in SICB and DCPB at all stages of your career. Have ideas to make the SICB and DCPB experience more inclusive? Attend the DCPB business meeting (date TBA) to share your ideas, email your division PO, or nominate yourself for a society leadership position. Want to strengthen training opportunities for graduate students and post-docs? Nominate yourself to serve as a representative on the Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC). Interested in SciComm and have an idea about how to engage the public in integrative biology? Contact a member of the Public Affairs Committee. Interested in developing a symposium on your favorite integrative research topic? Email me! Symposia anchor the annual meeting, increase the impact of our society’s journal Integrative and Comparative Biology, and generate revenue for the Society. Student and postdoc members are encouraged to engage in organizing symposia. Finally, something that we can all do is to support our society journals. Did you know that SICB has a new open-access journal? Integrative Organismal Biology is a great place to publish your latest research results or opinion piece, and members receive a significant discount for publication charges, making this one of the most reasonable open-access publishing options available!
Fall 2020 DEDE
Message from DEDE Leadership
Laura Zimmerman, chair.dede@sicb.org; Ken Field, secretary.dede@sicb.org; Cynthia Downs, dpo.dede@sicb.org
We are excited to participate in the Virtual Annual SICB Meeting this January and February! Although virtual meetings can be quite a different experience than what we are used to, the virtual meetings have the potential to be more inclusive and just as interactive as physical meetings.
DEDE is hosting a best student presentation symposium that will stream live on Sunday, Jan 3rd. Be sure to check out the best students posters that are integrated into the broader poster sessions. DEDE sponsored 4 symposia:
- Biology’s best friend: Bridging disciplinary gaps to advance canine science, organized by Caleb Bryca and Ana Jimenez;
- The integrative biology of pigment organelles, organized by Florent Figon, Jérôme Casas, and Leila Deravi;
- Biology beyond the classroom: Experiential learning through authentic research, Design, and Community Engagement, organized by Alexandria Hansen, Lisa Whitenack, Patrice Connors, and Hayley Lanier;
- Blinded by the light: Effects of light pollution across diverse natural systems, organized by Meredith Kernbach, Stephen M. Ferguson, Valentina Alaasam, Colleen Miller, and Clint Francis.
If you have ideas for a symposium for the 2022 meeting, please email the division’s program office at dpo.dede@sicb.org.
At the end of the meeting, two new officers will be taking the reins in our division, Patricia Lopes will be taking over as DEDE Secretary and Laura Mydlarz will be the new Program Officer. We look forward to their contributions to divisional leadership.
We will be having two elections next year for positions within our division: Secretary and Program Officer. If you are interested in serving in one of these important positions, please contact any member of the Division Executive Committee.
Finally, our standard reminder that although our newsletter only comes twice a year, you can always use the Monthly Member Updates to share information about meetings, workshops, or other opportunities in ecoimmunology and disease ecology. If you have announcements or information you’d like to share with DEDE members, please send that to the Division Secretary (Secretary.DEDE@sicb.org) no later than the 4th of any given month. If you are on Twitter, you can always reach us @SICB_DEDE.
Speaking of news related to divisional members, we are happy to share the following information. Some of us are working on COVID-19 related projects:
- Patricia Lopes recently had an article published contrasting human behavior under COVID-19 and the behavior of otheranimals when disease is around. “We Are Not Alone in Trying to Be Alone”
- Ken Field is a Co-PI on an NSF RAPID grant looking at the responses of bats to coronavirus infections. “Bats carry coronaviruses but don’t get sick. Could their secret help us fight COVID-19?”
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Laura Mydlarz -
Patricia Lopes -
Fall 2020 DEDB
Table of Contents
Message from the Chair
Deirdre Lyons, chair.dedb@sicb.org
I hope this newsletter finds you, your families, and your labs safe, sane, and adapting to the new challenges that 2020 brought. For many of us, SICB 2020 in Austin was the last meeting we attended in person, and I for one am seriously missing sharing science with colleagues in the same room, running into old friends, and meeting new students and postdocs to chat about their experiments and career goals. On the other hand, the virtual meeting format for SICB 2021 has many advantages—with no travel involved, more people can attend, and you never have to miss a talk because it’s double-booked in a different session; those with family obligations or teaching conflicts will be able to catch up on the oral and poster sessions asynchronously.
SICB leadership is doing everything they can to make the 2021 virtual meeting as rewarding as the in-person meetings. You can look forward to great talks and posters in the Best Student Presentations categories, and you can participate in the annual Evo-Devo Meet-ups, virtual style this time. These meetings provide an opportunity for students to talk with postdocs and faculty in their fields. These 1-on-1 or small group virtual meetings will be especially important this year, since students cannot chat with potential grad school or postdoc mentors at coffee breaks or poster sessions; I encourage faculty to participate! Invites to sign up for these virtual meet ups will go out in early December, so make sure to register before then. I’d like to extend a big thank you in advance to our new Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Committee representative, Ryan Hulett (Harvard University), for organizing the Evo-Devo Meet-ups. Welcome Ryan!
That brings me to welcoming the other new DEDB officers-to-be. Leslie Babonis is serving this year as the Secretary-Elect, as she simultaneously starts her faculty position at Cornell University in January 2021 (congrats Leslie!). At the end of the 2021 meeting, Frank Smith (University of North Florida) will become Program Officer-Elect and Dave Angelini (Colby College) will become Division Chair-Elect. I’d like to thank the outgoing DEDB Chair, Kim Hoke, for her contributions to SICB and the DEDB (and answering lots of emails from me…). As the new DEDB Chair, I’m excited to work with the existing officers, officers-elect, and all of the DEDB membership to keep SICB an important hub for discussions about EvoDevo. We have much to talk about.
One challenge many of us face is how to make teaching in a virtual setting engaging, effective, and fun. SICB has organized a number of resources including a Database of resources for online instruction, a Database of guest lecturers, and Lisa Whitenack has organized teaching circles, including one on EvoDevo. If you want to join this or other circles, contact Lisa (lwhitena@allegheny.edu). For those of you teaching invertebrate zoology, Bruno Pernet (Cal State Long Beach) has set up a Slack channel on the topic, which you can be added to by an email request to Bruno. Michael Barresi (Smith College) has been organizing zoom meetings about teaching Developmental Biology in the pandemic; follow him on Twitter at @mjbarresi. Even more challenging and urgent is the issue of systemic racism in this country in general, and in STEM. SICB has made overt efforts over the last few years to make its meetings a safe space that promotes and encourages diversity. But this year has taught us that there is a lot more work to be done in all aspects of our lives. I plan to hold time for a discussion of antiracist actions our division can take at our DEDB business meeting. The day/time of the business meeting is not yet set, but info will be forthcoming as the schedule solidifies. Remind your students that the business meeting is open to everyone!
Good luck with the rest of the year (vote!) and don’t forget to check in with yourselves and colleagues/friends/students about mental health. See you all in 2021, my friends!
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Deirdre Lyons, Chair -
Undergraduates in the Lyons Lab perform regeneration experiments in nudibranchs (at home and in quarantine, no less).
Message from the Program Officer
Matt Rockman, DPO.DEDB@sicb.org
The move to an online meeting this year creates new opportunities for a better conference experience. Aside from facilitating attendance while barefoot with a cat on your lap, an online meeting means you can attend as many talks as you like- no conflicts between concurrent sessions. You can ask questions, make comments, and connect with your community through the online chat functions. It’ll be different, but the Society has made extraordinary efforts to make it a great experience.
Our division is proud to offer awards for Best Student Talks and Posters at the conference. The talks will be prerecorded with a live Q&A period. Join me there to let the students know how excited we are about their research. There will be several other talk and poster sessions covering a broad range of evolutionary and developmental biology, and several of the symposia speak directly to our division’s themes. You’ll want to be there for Genomic Perspectives in Comparative Physiology of Mollusks (some of our favorite sprialians!), An Evolutionary Tail: Evo-Devo, Structure, and Function of Post-Anal Appendages (featuring DEDB pioneer Billie Swalla and her tailless ascidians), and Integrative Biology of Pigment Organelles (with talks on color pattern development in evo-devo favorites like butterflies).
There’s still space to add to the conference—check out the society-wide newsletter to find the call for workshops. Workshops will be held in the days and weeks after the early-January “live” part of the meeting, and they provide a venue for live (synchronous) meetings with your colleagues, to communicate about the latest and greatest in methods, concepts, data, outreach, education, and more.
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Matt Rockman, Program Officer -
A planktotrophic larva of the marine annelid Streblospio benedicti.
Message from the Secretary
Prashant Sharma, Secretary.DEDB@sicb.org
I’ll echo here the other officers’ thoughts on the myriad challenges and changes that 2020 has brought to our doorstep. In the past eight years that I have been a member of SICB, I have found interacting with peers, students, and postdocs at the annual meetings to be among the most rewarding experiences of our profession (I mean, I got to dance with BIllie Swalla at a SICB social once–hands-down highlight of my career). Yet, we look forward to the virtual meeting format at SICB 2021 as a vehicle for bridging the boundaries of locations and time zones, in a way that we never could before.
As one of the organizers of the Best Student Talks and Posters competition, I highly encourage members of DEDB to volunteer as judges! The entries are an absolute blast every year to spectate, but the feedback you can provide to student competitors in the role of a judge can make a huge difference to the next generation of young investigators in evo-devo. Please reach out to me (secretary.dedb@sicb.org) if you are interested in judging either format of presentations. Shortly before the start of the meeting, we’ll also be reaching out to the membership with more solicitations, in the hope of establishing a diverse and balanced panel of judges for the competition. Once again this year, after the competition, I will be mailing back to students a portion of the judging ballots that will contain written feedback from each judge.
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Prashant Sharma, Secretary -
An undescribed male sea spider (Pallenella sp.) carrying eggs; a major goal of the lab is to decipher the evolution of appendages in this enigmatic group.
Message from the Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative
Ryan Hulett, Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative
Greetings DEDB Students and Postdocs! Wishing you health and happiness! We want to reach out and let you know that we will be continuing the annual Evo-Devo Meet-ups this year for SICB 2021, in a virtual fashion. We will be contacting those folks that have registered in early December to coordinate the Evo-Devo Meet-ups!
For those of you that have participated in the past (or have attended a virtual conference recently), please give feedback or ideas on DEDB’s Evo-Devo meet-ups. We’d like to hear whether you think it’s valuable, how it can be improved, problems or bad experiences, the ease of signing up, new ideas, etc. Thanks!
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Ryan Hulett, Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative -
Ryan’s work in the Srivastava Lab focuses on regeneration in the acoel Hofstenia miamia (three-banded panther worm).
Fall 2020 DEE
Table of Contents
Message from the Chair
Cameron K. Ghalambor, Chair.DEE@sicb.org
Dear DEE Members,
A common theme in this year’s newsletter is how much our lives have been impacted by the events surrounding us. Between the global coronavirus pandemic, protests for racial equality, and unprecedented wildfires and hurricanes, each of our lives has been impacted to different degrees. Thus, while SICB is a scientific organization, we are not divorced from the political, societal, and environmental issues facing each of us. What does this mean in practice for SICB as a whole, and DEE specifically? Behind the scenes I can report that I’ve been impressed by the leadership of SICB in terms of taking positions and putting policies in place that directly address issues of inequality, inclusiveness, and safety for our members. Against this backdrop I wanted to give you a quick rundown on some new DEE developments. First, our current Secretary Martha Muñoz, was elected this spring to be Program-Officer Elect; she will take over for our current Program Officer Sarah Diamond in 2022. Martha and I will also be finishing our tenures as Secretary and Chair respectively, in January 2021. Christine Miller from the University of Florida will transition from Secretary Elect to Secretary, and Fran Bonier from Queens University will transition from Chair Elect to Chair. Thank you all for serving the society and the division!!

For me personally, it has been an honor to serve as your Chair for the past two years. My goal was to work towards making DEE your home within SICB. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown off some of the planned changes but keep your eye out for the next round of elections where we plan to include a vote adding a fee to DEE membership. As a reminder, the additional funds are to grow the DEE “Beers & Brains” social into a larger more inclusive social for DEE members. I hope in 2022 to join many of you in person at this social.
As for the 2021 SICB meeting in Washington D.C., the meeting will largely be a virtual event in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Virtual meetings represent both challenges and opportunities to interact. While many of you are no doubt disappointed and considering skipping out on this year’s meeting, I would encourage you to participate the best you can. The meeting still represents an opportunity to share with your colleagues and friends new research (or lack thereof) and our shared experiences during these challenging times. In a time of isolation, let’s not miss an opportunity to connect, even if it is virtual. I’d particularly like to reach out to members who might not have attended a meeting before or in recent years; it would be great to see you virtually! I also want to let you know about the many events DEE will be sponsoring during the Washington DC meetings. Here is a quick rundown of DEE events.
Check out one of the six DEE sponsored symposia. From effects of light pollution to the biology of sticky substances, from mollusk to manakin genomics, and from spatio-temporal variation in behavior to pigment organelles, check out all the ways DEE provides the ecological and evolutionary “glue” that holds SICB divisions together. See Program Officer Sarah Diamond’s post below for more details about the symposia.
Speaking of symposia, don’t miss the DEE Huey Award Symposium for best student presentation. The symposium will feature talks by 7-8 finalists selected from a very competitive pool. You can count on some of the best talks of the meetings being in this symposium.
We won’t be able to meet in person but keep on the lookout for announcements on virtual meet-ups. See Graduate Student Representative Craig Marshall’s post below for more details.
I know the DEE Business Meeting doesn’t sound that exciting, but plan on “virtual” attendance. Stay tuned to the SICB website for more information.
What do you consider cutting-edge science? What topics do you think need attention and synthesis? The 2023 SICB meeting in Austin, Texas will soon be soliciting proposals for symposia. It’s not too early to start thinking about symposium ideas and people who could participate.
Lastly, remember to renew your membership and take advantage of early registration to get the most value for attending the Washington DC meeting!
Message from the Program Officer
Sarah Diamond, DPO.DEE@sicb.org
Hi Division of Ecology and Evolution Members!
It’s been a productive, if unconventional, autumn as we have been working to wrangle the over 1,600 abstracts for the 2021 meeting that have been submitted. We had a total of 183 abstracts from DEE, including 38 posters and 145 talks, with a number of additional presentations on DEE-related themes.

Fortunately, with the digital platform for the meeting, there will now be an extended window of time to view the presentations (3 January to 28 February). There will also be lots of opportunities to interact with folks via the chat feature on their presentation and at the various social events (more on that below).
We also have a fantastic lineup for our Best Student Presentation, the Huey Award, which will feature 11 finalists in the poster and talk formats. Thanks to everyone who submitted an application for the Huey Award competition! We had loads of applications and it was incredibly difficult for the judging panel to select the list of finalists. As such, the BSPs are often some of the strongest presentations of the entire conference, so be sure to bookmark these on your schedule. The DEE BSPs will all occur on the first day of the meeting, 3 January, so that should make it fairly easy to do!
Last, but not least, we have six DEE-related symposia in the 2021 meeting. These symposia cover a large range of topics that highlight the diversity of scientific questions and approaches encompassed by DEE. We have a couple of genomics-themed symposia across diverse groups from manakins to mollusks. We also have symposia on artificial light at night (ALAN) impacts on organisms; spatio-temporal variation in behavior; integrative biology of pigment organelles; and the biology of sticky substances. Keep an eye out to bookmark these great symposia on your SICB schedule.
Stay tuned for information about social events including the Beer and Brains social. Things will certainly be a bit different this year, but we have some innovative ideas on the table for how to foster the scientific discussion, socializing and networking that we all enjoy at Beer and Brains under the new conference format this year. If you have ideas for the socials, especially Beer and Brains, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your DEE officers.
Finally, the programming committee is currently reviewing the submissions for proposed symposia for the 2022 meeting. Thanks to everyone who submitted a symposium proposal this year – we have a really strong lineup of contributions to the 2022 conference and ICB journal. Looking ahead, it’s never too early to start thinking about symposia for 2023. (In fact, some of you have already submitted future symposia ideas, so keep those coming!) Your DPOs, myself included, are always happy to discuss symposium ideas with you, so please do reach out with any questions, whether you’re at the planning stage or have a full proposal together. Also, just a quick reminder that the wonderful Martha Muñoz is our new DEE DPO elect – congrats!! She will be taking over the programming duties for the next cycle, so do keep that in mind when soliciting feedback on your future symposium proposals.
Although we’re still in the thick of it programming-wise, it’s been an honor to serve as your DPO. It’s certainly not what I expected when I signed on as DPO, but I’d like to thank all of you for your excellent suggestions and feedback while we’ve been programming the content for this truly unprecedented SICB conference. I continue to be amazed by your perseverance. The number and quality of abstracts and symposium proposals we received despite everything that’s happened this year is incredible and inspiring. I wish you all the best and look forward to interacting with you in the new year.
Yours sincerely, Sarah Diamond
Message from the Secretary
Martha Muñoz, Secretary.DEE@sicb.org

This time last year I wrote to all of you in enthusiastic anticipation of the 2020 meeting in Austin, Texas. This year, the anticipation feels bittersweet because the backdrop for our upcoming meeting is full of loss and hardship. For all of us, 2020 is different. For many of us, the challenges are severe. We, as a society and community of colleagues, are struggling. Like Cam stated above, the scientific community is connected to the political, societal, and environmental issues facing each of us.
This year, SICB hopes to offer you an opportunity to come together – albeit digitally – to enjoy the intellectual alchemy that scientific discussion affords. This is a chance to build community, learn, and, hopefully, heal a little bit. I have been to several planning meetings in my capacity as an incoming Program Officer and as a member of the SICB Public Affairs Committee. What I have seen is incredible hard work and good will to put together a meeting amid many challenges. I know that SICB 2021 will be different, but for that reason it will also be special. I hope that you will join us however you can.
This fall marks my last term as DEE Secretary. After the 2021 meeting, Christine Miller will take over as Secretary. She has already done an excellent job as Secretary-Elect, and I know that she will be an amazing leader in our division. It has been an honor to serve DEE as Secretary, and I look forward to a new adventure as incoming Program Officer. Sarah Diamond has led by example, and I hope to continue all the incredible work she has done for the division. One of my goals as Secretary was to elevate the visibility of our junior members. To this end, we started including Profiles for several early career members of DEE in our fall newsletters. Below, you will see highlights for four of our graduate student and postdoctoral members. If you would like to be featured in the future, please reach out to me or to Christine.
Finally, I want to share that SICB will honor the life and legacy of Dr. George Gilchrist at the 2021 meeting through a special session. This session will take place towards the end of the meeting (February 2021). Cam and I are co-organizing this session and we have a wonderful lineup of speakers who have volunteered to share how George impacted their lives. Some of the talks are mostly scientific, focusing on how George’s prescience in integrative physiology inspired their research. Other talks focus on George as a mentor and colleague, and on how he inspired so many of us to become scientists. Please join us to honor and celebrate George.
Message from the Student/Postdoc Representative
This is my second year as your DEE graduate/postdoc representative for SICB and I couldn’t be more thrilled! I want to once again thank all of the graduate students, postdocs, and faculty that were able to attend our 7th annual Beers and Brains event in Austin, TX. Beers and Brains 2020 would not have been the success that it was if it were not for your participation. Although SICB will look quite different this year, we are still hoping to plan a virtual social for our DEE community. Our goal, as in the past, is to provide you with the opportunity to network, catch-up with old friends, and make new ones!

The SICB Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC) has some exciting events planned for this year’s conference. SPDAC will be hosting a virtual roundtable workshop that begins as a panel discussion before breaking out into smaller groups. This year’s panelists will consist of experts from various scientific careers inside and outside of academia. We will also be continuing our tradition of making ourselves available to you and addressing any questions you might have at our SPDAC virtual booth, so come say hello! SPDAC is currently in the process of generating digital brochures to provide undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs with useful information and tips, regardless of your current status in academia. New topics for this year include: how to write research and diversity statements for those applying for faculty positions, tips for undergraduates taking time off before applying to graduate school, networking for first-generation students, information for those applying to academic and federal fellowship opportunities, and many more. We will be posting brochures with more details on the SPDAC website closer to January. You will be able to download the brochures at your convenience.
Look out for more updates regarding DEE and SPDAC as we get closer to January! Be sure to follow SPDAC on Twitter (@SICB_SPDAC) for the most up-to-date information on all of the events we have planned. If you should have any questions or are looking for additional information about DEE and ways that you can become more involved, please do not hesitate to reach out (Craig.Marshall@colostate.edu). I look forward to hearing from you so we can work together to make SICB 2021 rewarding, memorable, and fun!
DEE Student Profiles
Beginning in 2019, our fall newsletter has featured profiles from our early career members, especially graduate students. Here we continue this feature and present highlights for four early career members of DEE.
Name: Henry Camarillo
Position: Ph.D. Student
Department: Yale University Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Personal Website: henrycamarillo.weebly.com
Research Description: I’m interested in understanding morphological evolution and its relationship with organismal function. I do this by considering how organisms have responded to different environmental factors such as diet, predation, and/or competition. I am particularly interested in understanding these form-function relationships on a macroevolutionary scale and I utilize phylogenetic comparative methods to do this. My current research is focused on understanding how feeding on hard-shelled prey as opposed to more elusive prey has influenced the tempo and mode of evolution in four-bar linkage systems for wrasses and mantis shrimp.
Hobbies and Interests: Listening to electronic music, going on walks with my dog, and doing anything water related (swimming, going to the beach, etc.)
A fun memory of SICB: One of my favorite SICB memories was definitely the social for the Division of Vertebrate Morphology at SICB 2018 in San Francisco. SICB 2018 was my first SICB and I was already having a great time. Since I’m really into techno music, arriving at the social to find a techno DJ playing music solidified my feelings that SICB was the society and conference for me!
Advice for fellow students: One piece of advice I would give to my fellow students is to remember the reasons you chose to pursue science in the first place. It can be really easy to forget our reasons for pursuing science when dealing with stressful/anxiety-inducing tasks. Remembering my love for animals, nature, and learning helps ground me when dealing with the stress.
Name: Brett L. Hodinka
Position: Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia
Department: Department of Biological Sciences
Personal Website: https://bretthodinka.weebly.com

Twitter: @BrettHodinka
Research Description: My current work integrates physiology, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior in attempts to increase our knowledge of the mechanisms underpinning individual variation in a number of avian life-history traits that contribute most to variation in fitness. More specifically, I am investigating the idea of “animal athletes” in the context of ecological performance to identify individual variation in physiology and behavior that may lead to increased fitness. This research is being conducted using both a captive population of zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) and a wild-breeding population of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).
Hobbies and Interests: Some of my long-standing interests include mountain biking, kayaking, and hiking. More recently though, I have taken up birding! I now have a running “birder’s life list” and have been trying to add to it a newly seen bird every chance I get. Also, I really enjoy drawing when I have time. I mostly do “stipple” or pointillism drawings of wildlife which are basically pictures created by applying dots in distinct patterns to create various shapes and shading.
A fun memory of SICB: I have only been attending SICB for two years since the start of my Master’s degree at Western Kentucky University (WKU) and, thus, I have only been to the 2019 (Tampa, FL) and 2020 (Austin, TX) conferences so far. While I had a lot of fun at both, the Tampa conference sticks out the most to me. Throughout the duration of the conference, my P.I. at the time (Dr. Noah Ashley; WKU) spent some time introducing me to several amazing scientists from his field. It just so happened that this is where I would meet Dr. Tony Williams who, at the conference, was eager to have me send him an informal application package for an open Ph.D. position in his lab. I spent the night in my hotel room getting together a small application and sent it to him immediately! I am happy to say that I am now a Ph.D. student in Tony’s lab at Simon Fraser University.
Advice for fellow students: One bit of advice that I received, and maybe overlooked early on in my scientific career, was that you should try your best to network; and not just at conferences. At some of the first conferences I attended, I often quietly walked around listening to poster and oral presentations without interacting with anyone or asking questions. It was not until my first SICB conference that I saw the merit in networking. At conferences and even via social media, I have made connections with fellow researchers that have not only led to personal friendships, but also collaborative work on various aspects of my past and current research. So, not only do I get to look forward to reconnecting with these people at future conferences, whether it be in-person or virtual, but also these interactions open more doors and have the potential to elicit larger-scale collaborative research between you and somebody you met at SICB, for example!
Name: Valeria Ramírez Castañeda
Position: Second-year graduate student
Department: Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley
Personal Website: https://esperando370.github.io/vramirezc_website/

Research Description: Adaptations to new environments or novel interactions among organisms increases biological diversity. One type of interaction that often drives biological diversification is predator-prey interactions, which could result in co-evolution between different organisms adjacent in a food web. For my Ph.D., I am working with predators of poison frogs in Colombia to evaluate how multiple predators have adapted to feeding on toxic prey.
Hobbies and Interests: I enjoy contributing to science communication in Spanish, as well as discussions on diversity, inclusion, and equity in STEM. Therefore, I am currently working on understanding the consequences of the hegemony of the English language in science and generating viable alternatives. I also like to spend time with my friends, family, and pets. I like to camp and hike. Recently, I started to paint with watercolors and I am really enjoying it.
Advice for fellow students: Try to have fun in whatever you are doing. Help the community by creating diverse, inclusive, and equitable environments. And always remember: auto exploitation is not a virtue, you’re worth more than your work.
Name: Linyi Zhang
Position: Postdoc researcher
Department: Biology, Utah State University
Personal Website: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Linyi_Zhang2

Research Description: The common theme for my Ph.D. and postdoc work is to explore the interaction between evolutionary and ecological factors. For my Ph.D. work, I investigated how divergent host plant environments could promote speciation in a group of highly specialized herbivores called gall wasps. First, I focused on one species and studied how divergent environments promoted multiple reproductive barriers among populations, including reduced immigrant fecundity and context-dependent hybrid fitness. Then, I expanded to test five gall wasp species that feed on the same divergent set of host plants to consider the generalities of divergence across this guild. For my postdoc work, I am exploring how environmental variation across time and space drive allele frequency changes in Lycaeides butterflies across the genome. I aim to accomplish this by linking genotype, phenotype and fitness through field collections, manipulative experiments as well as genomic work.
Hobbies and Interests: Hiking, board games, ping-pong.
A fun memory of SICB: Exploring the food options in the city with my peers was a lot of fun!
Advice for fellow students: I got this advice from faculty in my first year of Ph.D., when I was stressed about how to come up with my own research ideas that are executable: “read as much as possible and as wide as possible”. At the time, that didn’t comfort me very much. Later on, I found that it is the most important thing in graduate school. Ideas will come when you read and think and give it time.
Fall 2020 DIZ
Table of Contents
Message from the Chair
Ken Halanych, Chair.DIZ@sicb.org
Dear DIZers,
Well this year has been like no other and my hope is that all are staying safe and healthy. Our normal routines, both professionally and personally, have been turned upside down. I hope that most of you have found some positive side to the situation, whether it be working from home or more regularly connecting with distant colleagues as you are a Zoom or WebEx guru now. Unfortunately, this year we will not get to see each other face to face, but the virtual venue of the SICB January meeting will offer some new opportunities and will likely change how we do some things down the road. For some, doing a virtual meeting presents a new challenge and takes a bit more effort to say engaged, but the SICB Executive Officers and Burke Associates have worked hard to make sure this coming meeting will be as smooth and as engaging as possible.
Moving forward there are several important points of business that have arisen. Firstly, I would like to introduce and congratulate Jon Allen as our next DIZ chair. Jon’s tenure will officially start at the end of this meeting. He has been a long-standing member of SICB and DIZ. I owe him a bit of thanks because Jon has kindly stepped into the roll a bit early. Due to COVID, my planned 4-week Antarctic expedition has turned into a 3-month tour of quarantine, transit and finally fieldwork. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the DIZ membership for allowing me to serve the Division for the last three years.

Before Jon officially takes the reins, I will be presiding over the DIZ business meeting and representing the division at the SICB business meeting. How these will work at the general meeting this year is still being worked out, but I think it is fair to say it will be a Zoom meeting. If you have a topic you wish to discuss or bring to the SICB executive committee please email Jon, Justin McAlister (DIZ secretary) or myself. I do not have the full meeting schedule at the time of writing this report, so please stay tuned for a mail about concerning information about the time and connection information of the business meeting.
Considering the meeting, there will be Best Student Presentations again this year in both oral and poster categories. Please note that the finalists for the BSP Oral contributions will also be presented in a single session on January 3rd. Please look at the meeting program for more information. As always we are looking for great symposia for future meetings. If you have a good idea, please contact DIZ Program Officer Karen Chan (kchan1@swarthmore.edu). Remember that symposia proposals that speak to multiple divisions and that balance speaker diversity are more likely to be successful.
A special thank you to Jennifer Burnaford who has served as the Chair of the Libbie Hyman scholarship committee for the past 10 years. During Jen’s time as chair, many students have received awards that have help shaped their futures! Jen will be stepping down from this position and we are in the process of finding a replacement for this important committee.

I also want to give a final shout out to a great colleague, mentor and friend to many of us. John Pearse passed away in late July. To say John was a supportive teacher of a generation of invertebrate biologist is an understatement. John always had a kind word or supportive words and always maintained an infectious joy for all things invertebrate! Donations in his memory may be made to support students in the marine sciences through UCSC’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Long Marine Laboratory, the Western Society of Naturalists, California Academy of Sciences, or Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.
John Pearse was a wonderful teacher of invertebrates, and this year in particular teaching invertebrates and especially trying to run organismal labs has been challenging with virtual classes. A group of individuals have banded together to share ideas on teaching invertebrate biology classes. They have been covering a wide variety of both invertebrate and pedagogical topics especially in a virtual setting. Those interested in joining the discussion should reach out to Kevin Kocot (kmkocot@ua.edu) or Bruno Pernet (Bruno.Pernet@csulb.edu).
Lastly, not all understand the importance of science or trust the scientific process. With so much at stake for the future, please take time to step outside your own bubble (with a mask on, of course) and talk to others about the why science and objectivity are important. Take a little extra time to explain how we know climate change is real and exacerbated by humans, or how they might slow plastics pollution. Equally important, talk to others with a different life experience and try to see their perspective. Communication and respect are great starting points for understanding what actions might help overcome systematic bias and racism. — Ken Halanych
Message from the Program Officer
Karen Chan, DPO.DIZ@sicb.org
The first-ever virtual SICB Annual Meeting is just a few months away. While the COVID19 pandemic prevents us from physically meeting, it presents exciting opportunities for scientists from other continents to take part at SICB. We have received over 1600 abstracts from all over the world and the Program Officers are meeting on Oct 3 to finalize the program. With the extended virtual format, consider yourself has subscribed to a cool, new- science streaming platform. We will present you with a carefully curated list of talks and poster presentations. Forget Netflix and Chill, get ready for SICB and Thrill.

DIZ is supporting half of the upcoming symposiums which will be streamed live from Jan 4- Jan7, 2021. On Jan 4, the two DIZ-sponsored symposia are “Blinded by the light: Effects of light pollution across diverse natural systems” and “Genomic perspectives in comparative physiology of mollusk: Integration across disciplines”. On Jan 5, we will have “Biology beyond the classroom: Experimental learning through authentic research, design, and community engagement”, “An evolutionary tail: evo-devo, structure, and function of post-anal appendages”. And on Jan 6, the symposia will discuss “The integrative biology of pigment organelles”, and “The biology of sticky: adhesive silk, fiber, and glue biomaterials across Eukaryota”. There will be question and answer sessions at the end of these symposia for you to engage with the presenters.
Instead of running around in the Marriot in D.C., you can also enjoy the contributed talks and posters in the comfort of your own home/office at your own pace through Feb 28, 2021. Presenters should upload their recorded talks in December. Please stay tuned for further instructions. And don’t hesitate to reach out via email dpo.diz@sicb.org should you have any questions.
Thank you for all your support and patience during this difficult time. Don’t forget to step outside and enjoy fall in between all the Zoom meetings. I eagerly look forward to interacting with you online in Jan 2021 and see you in person in Phoenix in 2022. — Karen Chan
Message from the Secretary
Justin McAlister, secretary.diz@sicb.org
Dear Invertophiles,
This year has certainly been one for the history books; I hope this newsletter finds you doing as well as can be expected during these trying times. The other officers have provided valuable relevant updates and so I’ll keep mine short. While the format for the upcoming 2021 Annual Meeting will be different than in years past, I suspect that some new components will make for valuable

additions to future in-person meetings. I’m finding this to be true with my teaching and research as well. For example, I’m teaching marine biology online to mostly senior undergraduates this semester and I’ve incorporated an online journaling assignment. Each week the students describe in a few short sentences their thoughts about the material that was covered in class. I’ve been so impressed and amazed with the connections they’ve been making between the course material, topics they’ve learned about in other classes (even outside the sciences), and also their personal experience. It’s made for a weekly enjoyable read for me, a not too onerous assignment for my students, and has become such a valuable addition to my class that I plan to incorporate it in all future offerings. I encourage you to think about ways you might add similar components to your courses! For invertebrate biology courses, the online resources and Slack channel moderated by Kevin Kocot and Bruno Pernet that Ken alluded to in his update (above) might be a good place to start.
I also want to echo Ken’s sentiments regarding the passing of John Pearse. John and Vicki were honored at the 8th North American Echinoderm Conference in 2017 and I’ll leave you with this great picture of them and the familiar faces of a few of John’s former students. — All the best, Justin

Message from the Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Committee representative
Rebecca Varney
As invertebrate zoologists, there is a tangible disconnect between our work and the frenzied advances to save human lives ongoing at every university today. Neighbors who worry that COVID was the product of an evil scientist in a secluded lair will ask me in the same breath why I would study molluscs when there are more important things to do. Friends who were forced to cull entire generations of shrimp due to university closures have had to justify their deep sadness to family members. I wondered, at the start of all this, what my little spark of science could be doing better for the vertebrate world.
A SkypeAScientist session gave me part of an answer. I signed up willing to talk one-on-one to home-schooled children and their families if needed. So, I ended up digitally in a living room in Oklahoma, being interrogated about spiny lobsters by an 8 year old. No, I don’t work on lobsters, but he had serious questions! As per usual during these sessions, if a student asks a question I don’t know the answer to, I share my screen as I seek the answer in the literature. And as I skimmed a paper trying to find out “how fast they can swim if they’re really gunning it”, his mother came to the table and somewhat shyly asked “is that what real science looks like?”. In an instant, my lobster-racing frenzy became a gentle introduction to science- the process, the statistical analyses, peer review. At the end of it, this lovely woman commented “I didn’t know you had to go through so much to publish something in science, even on lobsters?! It makes me trust the COVID drug studies a lot more.” Wow. Just wow.
Perhaps this is our power, as scientists who focus so much of our energy on the utterly bizarre lifeforms on this Earth. We are NOT

medical. We are NOT tied to a drug, or patent, or vaccine. But we ARE scientists, we do GOOD science, and we can EXPLAIN the rigorous process. It is easy to hit against defensive walls when you try to attack the issues at hand: phony drug trials, dangerous treatment suggestions, distrust in the experts. But you, right now, work on something just weird enough to be disarming. So when telling your neighbor about what you did this week, casually include that discovery alone isn’t enough, because science is held to a high standard no matter what it is. Talk about how that standard makes things take longer but allows us to trust in other scientists more. Who knows- your weird system or question might help another person think of the scientific community as a little more trustworthy. And if not, you still got some scicomm practice!
If you’re wondering, lobsters can hit 5 m/s (11 mph), but only when they’re startled.
Stay well and be kind to one another and yourself! — Rebecca Varney
Message from the Student Awards Committee Chair
Anne Böttger
Another meeting is almost upon us, and we would like to encourage all post-graduate members who are registered for the SICB Virtual Meeting in January 2021 to sign up as judges. Registrants will have the option to sign up as a judge in the checkout section of their online registration. In addition, you are also welcome to sign up as a judge by contacting me directly at aboettger@wcupa.edu.
Please help us continue the DIZ’s established history of valuing student presentations by signing up as a judge to evaluate student presentations and provide students with valuable comments that will aid them with future presentations. There are currently 11 poster presentations that need to be evaluated by 3-4 judges each. In addition, an ad-hoc committee chose 10 oral student presentations to be evaluated for BSP.
Judges will be able to choose presentations they are willing to evaluate via the online program for the virtual SICB meeting, which will hopefully be available in November. At that time judges should go online and select the DIZ presentations they want to judge: first come, first serve. When the schedule is complete, I will email your assignments and judging forms – typically in late December.
If you have not volunteered as a judge, I strongly encourage you to consider volunteering. It is great fun and a wonderful way to help the division. Judges are often in short supply and yet necessary to continue to offer student awards. In addition, judges’ comments are meaningful and important to prepare students for future presentations and help shape their future research questions. If you have any questions regarding the duties of a judge in this virtual format, please do not hesitate to email me at aboettger@wcupa.edu. You may also find additional information under FAQ’s for the virtual SICB meeting at https://sicb.burkclients.com/meetings/abstractfaq.php3.
I would like to thank all past DIZ judges for their time and effort and ask for their continued help. — Anne Böttger
Message from the Libbie Hyman Scholarship Selection Committee Chair
Jennifer Burnaford
In 2020, three scholars were awarded Libbie Hyman Memorial Scholarship funds to support their first significant field station experiences. We awarded $3000 to Charlotte Benedict, a graduate student at Ohio State University, to support participation in the

Marine Invertebrate Zoology course at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories. We awarded $1000 to Hannah Lee, a graduate student at Humboldt State University, to support travel to the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology as part of her MS work on the evolution of cheilostome bryozoans. We awarded $654 to Rachel Surprenant, a graduate student at the University of California Riverside, to support her participation in the ‘Taphonomic and Ecological Processes in Tropical Environments’ course at the University of the Bahamas Gerace Research Centre on San Salvador.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented all of our award recipients from pursuing their planned activities, as field stations around the world cancelled courses or closed their doors in an effort to flatten the curve. Because the parameters of the Libbie Hyman award are very specific (the award provides funding to support the first significant field station experience for students pursuing coursework or research on invertebrates), the funds cannot be used for alternative experiences. Therefore we have simply postponed the awards for the 2020 scholarship recipients so that they will be able to use the funds to pursue their proposed activities in 2021. Alternatively, if they wish to apply for support for a different activity for summer 2021, their new applications will be considered.
In hopes that field stations around the world will be able to resume activities, we will accept applications for the 2021 field season, with a closing date of February 4, 2021. The application form is available at http://sicb.org/grants/hyman/. If you or your students have questions about the application process, please feel free to contact me via email (my address is available at that site). Please encourage your best students to apply!
I wish to thank Will Jaeckle and Shanna Hanes for their service on the committee this year, and Ruedi Birenheide for making the web-based application process work smoothly. The Libbie Hyman Scholarship Committee extends our best wishes to all SICB members and their loved ones in this unprecedented and challenging time. — Jennifer Burnaford
Fall 2020 DNNSB
Table of Contents
Message from DNNSB Leadership
Greetings from the DNNSB Leadership! Like many of you, we are disappointed that SICB will be virtual this year, but we are embracing some of the positive aspects of a virtual meeting. The good news is that SICB is committed to making this virtual meeting as inclusive and accessible as possible. The virtual meeting will allow people who typically cannot attend SICB because of geographical constraints to participate, and the availability of presentations through the end of February means that you’ll have plenty of time to see all the fantastic presentations that you can’t squeeze into 4 days of an in-person meeting.
We are sure that you have many questions about how SICB will run the meeting this year. While the virtual platform and some meeting details are still in development, we are pleased to share the following information with you:
Meeting FAQs
- What is the plan for the virtual SICB meeting? Briefly, live-streamed symposia and plenaries will be held on January 3-7. On-demand talks, posters, and workshops will be available between January 3 – February 28. The online format will be through Pathable. Pathable was chosen because of its interactiveness and flexibility. You can view an example of that format here: https://botany2020.pathable.co/. Because of the late abstract submission and the need to begin programming the meeting, some of the details are still in development. SICB is also still working out the details on the Business Meetings and Social Events. For details on the programming format, please see the updates by SICB President Beth Brainerd and the Program Chair, Jake Socha, and be sure to check SICB website and the 2021 meeting website for the latest news.
- What are changes to the Best Student Presentation competition? DNNSB had a great turn-out for the Best Student Presentation oral competition, with 37 students applying. Because we don’t have the normal time constraints of an in-person meeting, the DNNSB Executive Committee elected to expand the competition to 10 oral presentations this year. The schedule for the meeting is still being finalized, but the Best Student Presentation Oral Competition will be held on Sunday, January 3rd. The presentations will be pre-recorded and presented in a synchronous session that allows online engagement from the community and interaction with the presenter.

Thanks to the flexibility of the online format, we will also be grouping the 6 Best Student Presentation Poster Competition entrants into a single poster session. Presenters will create a poster in PDF format along with a short audio explanation of their poster. Conference attendees will be allowed to provide feedback through text-based comments alongside the poster and will be able to interact with the presenter.
We are looking for DNNSB members to serve as judges for both the oral and poster BSP competitions. When you register for the meeting, please indicate your willingness to serve as a judge. The DNNSB Executive Committee will be modifying the judging rubric to account for the new online format this year. We will be sure to distribute the rubric to the BSP participants prior to the meeting, as well as to the judges.
- What are the symposia and events sponsored by DNNSB at virtual SICB 2021? In addition to the BSP sessions, DNNSB will co-sponsoring 6 of the 12 symposia at the 2021 meeting. We are the primary sponsor for two exciting symposia:
- “Spatiotemporal dynamics of animal communication,” organized by Kim Hoke and Nathan Morehouse
- “Sending and Receiving Signals: Endocrine Modulation of Social Communication,” organized by Karen Muraska.
We are also co-sponsoring several other excellent symposia:
- “Physical Mechanisms of Behavior” hosted by Patrick Green
- “Blinded by the Light: Effects of Light Pollution across Diverse Natural Systems,” organized by Meredith Kernbach
- “Biology Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning through Authentic Research, Design, and Community Engagement” organized by Alexandria Hansen (SICB-wide Symposium)
- “The Integrative Biology of Pigment Organelles” organized by Jerome Casas and Florent Figon (SICB-wide Symposium)
- How can we connect with colleagues during a virtual SICB? One of the most valuable aspects of the SICB meeting is convening with colleagues. SICB will provide a number of opportunities to connect virtually, including:
- Discussion boards and live discussion events for contributed posters/talks
- Live-streamed networking events and workshops
- Social media engagement is integrated with the virtual conference platform.
DNNSB Division News

We welcome Jim Newcomb as our incoming DNNSB Chair! Jim’s term will begin at the end of the SICB 2021 meeting.
Call for Nominations for Divisional Secretary. DNNSB will be electing a Secretary this upcoming spring. We need a nominating committee to solicit candidates for the position. If you are willing to serve on the nominating committee, or to run for DNNSB Secretary, please contact Mike Baltzley (baltzlem@wou.edu).
Call for Symposium Proposals. Not surprisingly, the number of symposium proposals for SICB 2022 was low this year compared to past years. Please consider submitting a proposal for SICB 2023. The deadline is August, 2021. There were relatively few submissions in neurobiology, neuroethology, sensory biology, BUT the proposals are always well-received and always make the cut. If you have an idea for a symposium, we urge you to submit a proposal. Moreover, if you want feedback about your ideas, please contact one of the DNNSB Officers:
- Michael Baltzley, DNNSB Chair, baltzlem@wou.edu
- Jeff Riffell, DNNSB Program Officer, jriffel@uw.edu
- Lisa Mangiamele, DNNSB Secretary, lmangiamele@smith.edu
- Maryam Kamran, DNNSB Student/Postdoc Representative, maryam.kamran@oregonstate.edu
- James Newcomb, incoming DNNSB Chair, JNewcomb@nec.edu
For Students and Postdocs. Students and postdocs are encouraged to interact with the SICB Twitter accounts @SICB_ , @SICB_DNNSB , and @SICB_SPDAC and other scientists on Twitter leading up to the meeting, as well as during the meeting. If you are a Full Member of SICB, please consider engaging with our student and postdoc members on this platform.
In addition ,the Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee is doing several how-to brochures for the virtual information booth. They plan to cover a broad range of topics to help students/postdocs in the absence of in person interactions, including:
- Diversity, equity, inclusivity, and anti-discrimination issues
- The “Nether Zone” between the undergraduate and graduate years
- 1st timer tips
- Fellowships
- Research statements
- How to present at SICB
- Non-academic career paths
- Networking for 1st-generation scientists
- Looking for grad school programs + advisers + doing interviews

The Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee is also planning a roundtable workshop on transferable skills with a panel discussion followed by virtual roundtables/chat rooms. They are hoping to get experts from a wide range of sectors such as non-governmental organizations, NOAA, National Parks Service/Resource Management, Fisheries and Wildlife Agencies, Museums, and Science Communication and Data Science.
We are trying to get about 12 experts from a wide range of sectors (NGOS, Think tanks, NOAA, National Parks Service/Resource Management, Fisheries and Wildlife Agencies, Museums, Science Communication and Data Science.)
Fall 2020 DOB
Message from the Division of Botany Leadership
Everything seems to be taking longer these days, including writing this newsletter, so we’ll keep things brief.

This past summer, Division of Botany member Tanisha Williams (Bucknell University) initiated Black Botanists Week and served as one of 11 members of the social media campaign’s organizing committee. Established to “promote, encourage, create a safe space for, and find more Black people (and BIPOC) who love plants,” the campaign engaged with thousands of online supporters in its inaugural week. Members of the committee were featured in dozens of news stories, including coverage in USA Today, Discover Magazine, and WNYC radio. To learn more, visit https://blackbotanistsweek.weebly.com/; and to hear more about the history of black botany check out the groundbreaking new virtual lecture series (cosponsored by the committee and Holden Arboretum), “Growing Black Roots: The Black Botanical Legacy,” at https://holdenarb.org/visit/events-lectures/scientist-lecture/.

Although we are headed into a meeting like no other, I can assure you that the Program Committee and Executive Committee have been taking an incredibly well-researched and thoughtful approach to putting together a virtual meeting. We will have a Best Student Presentation session for the Division of Botany, as well as a Best Student Poster competition. We have over a dozen other plant talks in sessions across the program. The SICB-wide education symposium on Tuesday promises to have interesting botany content, and plants are well represented in Wednesday’s symposium on the Biology of Sticky. DOB is also proud to be sponsoring a special session at SICB 2021 in honor of the late Dr. Vicki Funk, titled “Evolution and Biogeography on Islands.” The session will take place on February 26 and will be kicked off with a tribute from Dr. Funk’s friend and colleague at the Smithsonian, Warren Wagner.

Meeting virtually presents a new set of challenges but also new opportunities for accessibility and the way we interact. Invite your colleagues to register or host a watch party for the talks that interest you most. If you have any questions about the meeting or preparing a talk or poster, please feel free to reach out. Also, please give us input on how we might have a DOB social, and what you want social and informal interactions to look like this year.
Reminders:
- HELP US GROW! Tell your colleagues about us and encourage them to reach out to DOB leadership, become a DOB member, and send their integrative botanical work to the SICB meeting and/or journals. Don’t forget to renew your membership and register for the meeting early.
- SYMPOSIA: The 2023 SICB meeting in Austin, Texas will soon be soliciting proposals for symposia and it would be great to propose symposia that could have a strong botanical presence.
- DOB BUSINESS MEETING: Plan on “virtual” attendance — see the SICB website for more information.
- PICTURES! Send me plant pictures you want me to include in future newsletters.
Finally, for any readers feeling overwhelmed, take inspiration from the resilience of the bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) that has made it through 4800 years of sun, snow, drought, and wind. No crisis lasts forever and we will make it to the other side. We look forward to seeing many of you at SICB in January!
DOB Leadership: Chair, Chris Martine, Chair.DOB@sicb.org; Program Officer, Janet Steven, DPO.DOB@sicb.org; Secretary, Chris Muir, Secretary.DOB@sicb.org; Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative, Morgan Furze, morgan.furze@yale.edu
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Program Officer, Janet Steven -
Chair, Chris Martine -
Secretary, Chris Muir -
Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Representative, Morgan Furze
Fall 2020 DPCB
Message from the Chair
David Blackburn, Chair.DPCB@sicb.org
We are hoping for a strong presence of the Division of Phylogenetic and Comparative Biology at our next annual meeting, which will be all virtual for the first time ever. Will it be completely the same? Definitely not. Will it still be engaging and provide ways to connect with students and colleagues? Yes! By spreading the annual conference over several weeks, SICB is hoping to prevent “burnout by Zoom” and more opportunities for connecting with one another during these uncertain times.
We are looking forward to this year’s David and Marvalee Wake Award competition for best student presentation. We received 18 submissions to the competition for the Wake Award Best Student Talk. After removing the names and institutions of each abstract, a team from our division’s leadership evaluated all of the submissions. We have selected eight excellent submissions that span a range of topics exploring genes, genomes, and phenotypes in organisms in cephalopods, amphipods, fishes, frogs, and more. Please tune in to what promises to be among on our division’s best ever student talk competitions!
This coming year, we will see a changing of the guard in our divisional leadership. Dr. Samantha Price of Clemson University will serve as Chair-Elect and Dr. Ryan Felice of University College London will serve as Secretary-Elect. I am grateful to both of them for their willingness to serve our division. Dr. Leigha Lynch of Midwestern University (Glendale, Arizona) will become our division’s program officer, replacing Dr. Todd Oakley who has served our division for the past two terms in this role. Please join me in thanking Todd for his many years of service in this important role in our division!
DPCB Programming for SICB 2021

At this year’s SICB virtual conference, we will be hosting a broad range of talks and poster sessions, covering topics from evolutionary ecology to molecular evolution and phylogeography.
Be sure to support DPCB students giving talks in the Wake Award competition (held this year on January 3), and check out the symposia sponsored by DPCB:
- Genomic perspectives in comparative physiology of mollusks: Integration across disciplines
- An evolutionary tail: Evo-devo, structure, and function of post-anal appendages
- Biology’s best friend: Bridging disciplinary gaps to advance canine science
- Manakin genomics: Comparative studies of evolution and behavior in a unique clade of birds
Fall 2020 DVM
Table of Contents
Message from the Chair
Patricia Hernandez, chair.dmv@sicb.org
Hello all! Thank you for the opportunity to serve you these last two years. It is with a heavy heart that I pass the torch to Richard (Rick) Blob as your next Chair. I am sad to be at the end of my own term, but confident that Rick will do an amazing job leading our division!

Please support our dedicated session for the DVM Best Student Talk award competitions. This will take place just ahead of the meeting on Jan 3rd. What a great way to start our meeting!! The competition was certainly stiff picking the top 8 student presentations to compete at the meeting. I very much look forward to hearing these great talks on Jan 3rd, 2021. Thank you to Angela Horner, Lara Ferry, and Marianne Porter for serving on the Best Student Talk Committee.
Thank you also to Katie Staab, Andrea Ward, and David Coughlin who have agreed to serve as our nominating committee. We will be electing both a Chair-elect and Program Officer-elect during our Spring elections. We strongly encourage those interested in serving DVM to self-nominate. Click here to see a list of past officers. Nominations should be for full members in good standing. If you are interested in running, please reach out to Andie Ward at award@adelphi.edu.
Message from the Program Officer
Mason Dean, dpo.dvm@sicb.org
After a marathon Zoom session at the start of the month, the DVM and DCB sessions are shaping up nicely for the 2021 conference. Thanks to Matt McHenry (DCB’s PO) for all the help juggling the many abstracts: so far, we have 67 posters in seven sessions and 251 talks over 24 oral sessions. This is in contrast to the 144 posters and 34 oral sessions of last year, but overall we actually already have 10 more talks than the 2020 conference, since we can pack more talks into each online session this year. Even in the new online SICB format, we’re continuing our typical strong turnout: as with last year, DVM/DCB talks represent nearly a quarter of all of those submitted to SICB.

Planned session topics this year include perennial favorites (ecomorphology, muscle-tendon structure function, feeding functional morphology, terrestrial and aquatic locomotion) but also exciting emerging themes in DVM/DCB (biomaterials, biomimetics and robotics; ecological and phylogenetic effects on bone structure; mechanics of suckling, chewing and swallowing; locomotion on challenging substrates; structure-function correlates of habitat transitions… the list goes on). Session talks dovetail thematically, but one advantage of 2021’s online format is that you will be able to combine talks and posters into your own dream ‘playlist’ – see Jake Socha’s newsletter post for more details on navigating the new conference structure.
Once the schedule is posted, we’ll be working to promote the sessions leading up to the conference, you can help with this: just remember to tag us @SICB_DCB_DVM when giving props to DVM/DCB sessions! In particular, don’t forget to support our dedicated sessions for the DVM Best Student Poster and Talk award competitions – we have a killer, diverse line-up of presentations vying for the awards, and we’re excited to unveil them soon.
Lastly, remember to tune in for this year’s fantastic symposia (http://sicb.burkclients.com/meetings/2021/symposia/index.php), with some great ones supported by DVM. Congrats to the organizers!
- An Evolutionary Tail: Evo-Devo, Structure, and Function of Post-Anal Appendages (Janneke Schwaner, Tonia Hsieh, Craig
The zebra-tailed lizard, Callisaurus draconoides (photo credit: Wikipedia) McGowan)
- Biology Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning through Authentic Research, Design, and Community Engagement (Ali Hansen, Patrice Connors, Hayley Lanier)
- Bridging Disciplinary Gaps to Advance Canine Science (Caleb Bryce & Ana Jimenez)
- Physical Mechanisms of Behavior (Patrick Green & Alejandro Rico-Guevara)
- Sending and Receiving Signals: Endocrine Modulation of Social Communication (Karen Maruska & Julie Butler)
- The Biology of Sticky: Adhesive Silk, Fiber, and Glue Biomaterials Across Eukaryota (Mercedes Burns & Sarah Stellwagen)
- The Integrative Biology of Pigment Organelles (Florent Figon, Jérome Casas, Leila Deravi)
And finally, thanks for the support these last two years, it’s been an honor serving DVM — you’re definitely in safe hands with Nicole Danos, the next Program Officer!
Message from the Secretary
Angela Horner, secretary.dvm@sicb.org
Thanks again to Eric Tytell for forming the online volunteer guest lecture list; I (Angela) have personally utilized this and the students are really engaged and inspired by the diversity of expertise. Note that the DVM list of volunteer lecturers is rather sparse; please consider volunteering your services to the community in these (gestures vaguely) unprecedented times.