Successful applications 2009

Boris writes: "From February 6th to April 20th 2010 I was on a field trip on the Comoroan archipelago (which is located between Madagascar and Mozambique) to collect data for my diploma thesis. The thesis is about ecological niche modeling of the genus Phelsuma (with view on invasive species and the climate change), which is a genus of day active geckos. On the Comoroan archipelago, I searched ground reference points with a GPS receiver to analyze the habitat distributions of the four islands with help of satellite images and locality data of the five endemic (Phelsuma comorensis, P. nigristriata, P. pasteuri, P. robertmertensi and P. v-nigra) and the two invasive species (P. dubia and P. laticauda). Locality data of those species was used for calculations of ecological niche models and the potential species distribution, with help of climatic and habitat data (which included also future climatic conditions). That way I was able to show possible threats for endemic species caused by overlapping niches of invasive species, limiting factors for the potential species’ distribution and a view on the species’ distribution for a future climate scenario.

On the trip to the Comoroan archipelago I also learned a lot about planning and conducting expeditions. I have met a lot of great people and gained insight into a very interesting culture, flora and fauna.

Due to the EES travel grant I was able to finance passages between the islands by plane and boat. Thanks a lot for the support!"

Norbert writes: "Thanks to an EES travel fund, I was able to present a talk entitled "Afircan late Neogene climatic oscillations and speciation in Coccinia" at the 19th International Symposium on "Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology" of the German Botanical Society held in Vienna between September 16-19, 2010. During the three days of the meeting, I heard talks on genome evolution, plant invasions, and the impact of climate change on plant evolution; I talked to other PhD students and some of the more senior scientists. Overall, the meeting was a great experience, and this was also my first talk at an international conference.

After the conference, I visited the herbarium at the Vienna Museum of Natural History, which is among the world's largest (5.5 million speciments). I found 47 specimens of Coccinia, the genus I am working with, including four specimens that I could identify as "type specimens", that is, the specimen seen by the person first describing the respective species. Additionally, I was able to see two syntypes that lack duplicates in other herbaria (as far as known). Seeing these specimens was important, because scans or photos usually cannot resolve the details, for example, of pubescence, necessary for correct identification. Having seen the original specimens, I could confirm the taxonomic status of the species they represent as synonyms of other species. Seeing as many collections and as many type specimens as possible is crucial for my monographic work on Coccinia, which is part of my doctoral thesis.

I am very grateful to the VW-funded Evolution, Ecology and Systematics program for the financial support of my trip to Vienna this September."

Anja writes: "The SMBE is an annual meeting, which is dedicated to international scientists working in the fields of Population Genetics and Molecular Evolution. This year, the SMBE meeting took place in Lyon, France from July 4th to July 8th. The meeting attracted about 1,100 delegates from 45 countries (with most delegates coming from the USA), which made it the largest SMBE meeting ever. The scientific program included four plenary lectures and 28 symposia grouped into four general topics: Genome Evolution, Population Genomics/Theory, Phylogenomics, Molecular Evolution and Phenotypes. Every morning, there was a Plenary Talk first which was then followed by four parallel sessions until the early evening. On two days, poster sessions took place after the talks. Since the number of participants at this conference was enormously big, lunch was provided in lunch boxes every day. The Conference Dinner took place at the Brasserie Georges on Wednesday the 7th of July.

For the meeting I prepared a talk about the “Evolution of a resistance gene family in wild tomatoes: Relating nucleotide diversity to functional consequences”. During 15 minutes I had the opportunity to present one of my PhD projects to the scientific community. After the talk, people asked interesting questions and gave me useful suggestions concerning my future work. During the meeting, I met again some scientists I already knew from previous conferences and I also got to know people I had never met before. I had interesting discussions with all these people and I invited one famous researcher I met at the conference to do a talk in the EES Seminar Series in the coming semester.

The SMBE meeting took place in a professional, but nevertheless relaxing atmosphere. I listened to many inspiring talks, met many interesting people and went back to Munich with plenty of new ideas and feeling freshly motivated for my research.

Overall, the SMBE Meeting was a very interesting and pleasant experience. I enjoyed it a lot and can only recommend it to every student or scientist working in the field of Population Genetics."

Francesco writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant I had the great opportunity to visit Frank Jiggins lab at Cambridge University. Frank Jiggins is working on host parasite interaction since more than ten years. I had the possibility to learn skills and useful technics for infection experiments with fungal enthomopatogens and to perform a trial experiment. I also had advices on data analysis and useful discussions with people from the lab and the University. I presented my project to the group during the journal club and I had important feedbacks for my future work. I would like to thank the ESS for funding my accomodation there."

Andreas writes: "Thanks to the EES travel award, I was able to I attended the 16th meeting of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI) in Copenhagen, Denmark, from August 8th to August 14th 2010. The quadrennial congress is one of the most important meetings for people working on social insects. Almost 800 people came to discuss the newest developments in social insect research. I had a couple of very interesting and inspirational discussions not only during the congress but especially during my poster presentation, where I presented results of my first manuscript. People were highly accessible and very friendly throughout the whole congress. To conclude, I would like to thank EES for the financial support and the whole organizing team of the IUSSI 2010 in Copenhagen for this memorable experience."

Ilka writes: "From August 8th to August 14th 2010 I participated in the 16th International Congress of the IUSSI which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. On the conference, that hosted more than 750 delegates from 40 countries, I met researchers studying social insects from all over the world. The program consisted of 31 symposia (4 parallel symposia at a time) about different topics such as evolution, behavioral ecology, genetics, neuroethology or host-parasite interactions in social insects. Besides the talks in the symposia there were two plenary talks by invited speakers every day.

On the conference I presented a poster („Alternative reproductive tactics and sex allocaton in the ant Hypoponera opacior“ ). During the poster presentation I had some very interesting conversations. It was helpful to discuss not only my poster but also some of my future plans with people working on similar projects. Furthermore, the designing and presenting of the poster was a great experience for me since this was my first poster presentation on a conference.

I am very greatful that the EES travel grant made it possible from me to join this conference! Thank you!"

Sonja writes: "The Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) is the largest international meeting in this field. It takes place each year either in the United States of America or Canada, Europe, or Asia. More than 1000 participants joined the conference this year in Lyon. The meeting started with a plenary lecture on Sunday evening given by Jody Hey from Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. Each day, a plenary lecture took place followed by four parallel symposia on various fields of evolutionary biology grouped into population genomics, genome evolution, molecular evolution and phenotype, and phylogenomics. The plenary talks were given by Jenny Graves, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, Katie Peichel, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA, and Patrick Forterre, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. During such big conferences, it is always difficult to choose between all the different, interesting talks during the symposia. However, as several people from Munich joined the meeting we were sometimes able to go to different sessions which were interesting for some of us and share our information afterwards. As the weather was great this year, we also could sit in the nearby park during lunch and had some interesting discussions. Additionally, for me it was the last opportunity to join the Munich group once more as I started my PostDoc right at the beginning of July. That I really enjoyed as it was very useful to take part in such a meeting at this breakpoint of my career.

I was able to contribute a poster titled “Differences and similarities in sex-biased gene expression over 30 million years of Drosophila evolution” about my PhD work on the conference. Moreover, I had been invited to give a talk in a workshop organized by the chairmen of our Symposium. This workshop took place on the last day of the conference. Besides the large number of participants I had many visitors during my poster session and I got quite good feedback and suggestions for further work. Everybody was very kind and I was also able to meet some people I got to know at previous conferences.

At a conference which is as big as this, it is normally quite difficult to meet particular people and to speak to them as usually everybody is quite busy. Nevertheless, I had some very interesting discussions and went to very good talks. The only negative point I could think of is the fact that everything was so dense. Sometimes it was difficult to digest all the given information between the sessions and to really concentrate. Moreover, there was not much spare time and the days were very long. However, I really enjoyed the whole meeting and thank the EES committee for funding me to go there."

Lena writes: "In July 2010 I attended the Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) in Lyon, France. The meeting was held at the Lyon Convention Center, where around 1000 Researchers from all over the world gathered for five days of scientific exchange. Every day was opened by a plenary talk, which was followed by four parallel sessions of presentations that covered the following topics: Genome evolution, Population genomics, Phylogenomics, and Molecular evolution and phenotype. Besides being able to attend very interesting talks by many leading scientists in the field, I also presented a poster on my current PhD research during one of the poster sessions. This was a great opportunity to get into touch with people conducting research on related subjects, since the atmosphere of the poster sessions was very relaxed and friendly. During and after the poster session, a couple of very nice discussions about my project as well as those of other PhD students and Postdocs developed. These gave me new insights into latest research findings and new ideas for my own project. All in all, the meeting was very exciting and informative and gave me lots of new input for my project. Thanks to EES for funding this trip!"

Oliver writes: "I had been on field work on the Comoros, close to Madagascar, for my PhD thesis "Reptiles on Indian Ocean islands: Phylogeny, biogeography and the impact of environmental changes". From there, I was able to conduct a one-week trip to Madagascar, supported by my EES travel grant, to search for Ebenavia maintymainty. This is a small gecko species known only from two localities. On Madagascar, I was unable to visit one locality (Tsinamampetsotsa) because due to the current crisis access for scientists to the ANGAP protected areas is much more restricted. Night excursions are no longer allowed. I spent several days at the other locality (near Toliara) and observed many reptile species, but not the one I was looking for. This may have been due to the extended dry season 2009/10. My work focuses on Ebenavia inunguis, which appears to be a species complex. Therefore, E. maintymainty, being the only other known species of Ebenavia, might contribute to clarifying these complex relationships as the closest outgroup. I will now continue working with E. inunguis and hope either to find another possibility to travel to Madagascar or for colleagues to collect a sample for me."

Andreas writes: "During the first field trip we performed standardized behavioral experiments to estimate the base aggression of Temnothorax longispinosus ant colonies, before putting them back into enclosures with different density and/or parasite treatments. After one month colonies will be recollected during a second field trip and again tested for aggression. This setup allows us to investigate the influence of density and parasite presence on aggressive behavior in their natural environment. By comparing the base aggression with the final aggression (after on month in the enclosure), we want to disentangle how phenotypic plasticity and natural selection shape the aggressive behavior of ant colonies in the field. The EES travel fund helped me a lot in conducting the first part of this ongoing field manipulation."

Mingbo writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant, I was able to participate in the 16th Annual European Meeting of the PhD Student in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB 2010) in Wierzba, Poland. EMPSEB is an annual meeting of European PhD students of Evolutionary Biology. It takes place in a different European city each year and this year was organized by students in Poland. In total, more than 70 PhD students and 10 invited speakers came to this meeting which resulted in a friendly social environment and good connections between students and speakers. In the schedule, there were ten long talks by the leading scientists in different fields in evolutionary biology. Each student got the chance to give a 15 minutes talk (plus 5 minutes discussion) and received a written feedback both from the faculty members and other students as well. I have given a presentation on “Genetic structure of partially clonal populations of the Daphnia longispina complex based on microsatellite markers”, which initiated a lot of discussions during the whole meeting with the speakers and the students. By that, I received a lot of useful suggestions for further researches. Overall, I enjoyed very much and benefited a lot from this great meeting. Thanks very much to EES for funding the trip."

Robert writes: "Thanks to the financial support by an EES travel grant I was able to join this year's workshop on computational RNA biology in the beautiful town of Cargèse (Corsica). The course was organized by the European Association for Molecular Biology (EMBO) for the second time since 2008 and took place at the 'Institute d'Etudes Scientifiques de Cargèse'. It was directed at PhD students and Postdocs from biological sciences which focus their work on the study of RNA molecules. In total around 40 participants came to the workshop which resulted in a very informal atmosphere and allowed for great interaction between participants and speakers. The 5-day schedule was packed with lectures by leading scientists in computational RNA biology with topics covering RNA folding (Ivo Hofacker, Robert Giegerich, David Mathews), 3D modelling (Eric Westhof), ncRNA finding (Paul Gardner, Sam Griffiths-Jones), prediction of RNA-RNA interactions (Rolf Backofen), next-generation sequencing of ncRNAs (Cynthia Sharma) and many more.... All lectures were accompanied by computer labs that gave hands-on experience with the programs that were introduced during the lectures. Due to the nature of my current project I was especially interested in 3D structure prediction and comparative analysis of RNA structures and had the great opportunity to discuss with the experts in these fields. The small number of participants allowed for long and in-depth conversations in a very relaxed environment. The atmosphere during Wednesday's outdoor poster session (where I also presented my work on RNA secondary structure evolution) was great and was just surpassed by the culinary highlight of the week – grilled swordfish which was served directly from the barbecue near the sea. All in all I returned from the meeting with plenty of ideas for my current work and also for future projects and can just encourage everyone working in the field of RNA biology to join this great workshop the next time it is being offered."

Sophie writes: "The Animal Sonar Symposium takes places only once every ten years. Thanks to the EES travel fund I could join this unique international conference already as a PhD student. Practically, all the important people from the field of animal sonar research joined the conference: Cynthia F. Moss, James A. Simmons, Hans Ulrich Schnitzler, Annemarie Surlykke, and Hiroshi Riquimaroux, to just name a small fraction of them. Every day high ranking scientists gave talks about their research on bats, toothed whales or technical issues involving biological sonar systems. The younger scientists presented their work in poster sessions. In front of my poster, I had the opportunity to discuss my own research on vocalisation in shrews with a lot of interesting scientists. Beyond the poster sessions, I also spoke to a lot of the conference's participants about their research and even made contacts for possible future work. Apart from the pure scientific input, it was a wonderful experience to meet colleagues from such a huge variety of different countries and cultures and learn about their way of discussing scientific and every-day topics."

Sonja and Miriam write: "In the beginning of 2010 we went to the PopGroup Meeting in Liverpool, UK. This meeting takes place each year somewhere in the UK and is known to be a good starter conference for young researchers.

Every day started with a plenary talk, afterwards there were three parallel sessions until five o’clock in the evening. The plenary talks were given by Tom Eickbush (University of Rochester, USA), Neil Hall (University of Liverpool, UK) and John Pannell (University of Oxford, UK). In addition, at this meeting the 29th Fisher memorial lecture which was given jointly by Brian Charlesworth and Professor Deborah Charlesworth from the University of Edinburgh, UK, took place. In total, approximately 200 people participated this conference. On Thursday evening, the poster session took place accompanied with a wine reception and followed by a diner with asian food. For the conference, Miri prepared a poster summarizing the work done during the first year of her PhD with the title “Selection on expression variation at B4galnt2 in natural populations of house mice”. Sonja gave a talk on her main PhD project entitled “Studying adaptive evolution of sex-biased genes in Drosophila ananassae”. Many people were interested in our projects and had a lot of questions we could discuss with them. The conference finished with a nice conference dinner on Thursday, where we could sit together. The meeting was very informative and we heard a lot of interesting talks. Besides this we also had a lot of time to get in contact with other scientists. It was a small conference with a really nice and familiar atmosphere.

The most positive thing about the conference was the nice and informal atmosphere. It was very easy to get in touch with even the experts in the field of population genetics, so we encourage especially PhD students to join this conference. It is a good way to get started with scientific presentations outside your own familiar lab atmosphere."

Sofia writes: "Thanks to the financial support of the “Evolution, Ecology and Systematics” program I had the opportunity to take part at three interesting conferences during October and November 2009. The atmosphere at the conferences on Frauenchiemsee (IUSSI and CEWiM) was really great and I met again some people that I already knew from the last IUSSI conference. I presented a talk and two posters and got good feedback for this. I had the possibility to talk to a few people who were interested in my work, and gave me some useful suggestions for further projects. As the conference was on an island, and all participants stayed there over the whole conference, we had the possibility to talk about our work also during the evenings and meals. Furthermore I took part at the IUSSI conference at the University of Sussex, where I presented a poster. This conference was very interesting for me, because I didn’t know the work groups from west Europe so well before, and I learned to know, what they are working on. We also had the possibility to visit the laboratory of Prof. Ratnieks, who organized the meeting and whose group is working amongst others on the foraging behavior of ants, but also on different topics with bees. I am very grateful to the EES Committee for giving me financial support."

Christoph writes: "Thanks to the financial support of the EES Travel grant, I participated at two conferences, the 1st Central European Meeting of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI) and the 3rd Central European Workshop in Myrmecology (CEWiM). Both conferences took place one after the other at the Abbey Frauenwörth, which is located on the idyllic island Fraueninsel in Lake Chiemsee. I’ve heard a lot of interesting talks and met many scientists working in my field of interests. Especially during the relaxed atmosphere of the socializing events a lot of motivating conversations took place. Furthermore, I was happy to present my work in front of so many professionals in my field (there were over 100 participants). I was very nervous before giving my talk, but it ran like clockwork. For me it was very helpful, that due to our organization work, I was standing in front of the audience many times. Hence, the situation to stand and speak to the audience was familiar. So organizing such a meeting made a lot of fun and is not only annoying work. After my talk I’ve had fruitful discussions with helpful suggestions for further avenues of research. Overall I enjoyed the participation of these conferences and it was a very positive experience for me. Thanks EES."

Patrizia writes: "Thanks to the EES travel fund I was able to visit the Systematics 2009 conference, which took place in Leiden in the Netherlands from 10th to 14th August 2009. This was the first meeting of the Federation of European Systematic Societies (BioSyst EU) as well as the first joint conference of the British Systematics Association and the Gesellschaft für Systematische Biologie. Apart from listening to many interesting talks on current research in various different fields of systematics, there was plenty of time during the poster sessions and breaks to make contacts and learn about other research projects. Talking to the many other participating PhD students about their projects and methods was especially interesting. During the poster sessions I also got to present two posters on my own ongoing research. Posters of students were evaluated individually concerning content, layout and scientific standard and the committee’s comments were quite helpful. While in Leiden, I not only attended the conference - I also used the opportunity to visit the Leiden Herbarium. This herbarium holds a major collection of Cucurbitaceae from Asia. Studying specimens there was essential to my project because I was able to obtain samples for several species that are crucial for the further progress of my research on the wild Asian relatives of the cucumber. In all, this trip was a good experience and a great contribution to my PhD research. Thanks to EES for funding this trip."

Sebastian writes: "Thanks to the EES travel fund, I was able to attend the 5th Ecology & Behaviour Meeting which took place in Lyon, France, from April 6th to April 10th, 2009. I really appreciated attending this conference as most other conferences take place in summer at the time of my experimental season. Despite its French-based venues, this conference saw participants, ranging from master students to post-docs, from many European countries. Each session was started with a talk of an invited speaker working on the field of the respective session. Then short presentations followed, and I also had the opportunity to present some of the results of my PhD thesis. The topics of the talks covered a broad range of behavioural ecology, and it was very interesting to get insight into the research of other groups in Europe.

The conference site was in an freshly renovated former monastery building on a hill outside of Lyon, offering great comfort as well as a nice view over the countryside. As all conference participants slept in this building, and breakfast and lunch were served there, too, a friendly, jointly atmosphere arose. The schedule was tight, but nevertheless left some space to get to know each other, both during the coffee breaks in the poster room and during lunch (which by the way was served in the form of a delicious buffet). In the evening, a bus brought us to the university cafeteria in downtown Lyon where we had dinner before we went to the open-to-public evening lecture in French on current topics like the sesquicentennial of Darwin’s publication of “The origin of species” and the theory of evolution or the global warming and its consequences.

Thursday afternoon, the organizers arranged a guided tour in the City Hall of Lyon, and afterwards I visited, together with some other PhD students, the old city centre of Lyon. We climbed the hill to see the basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, and we enjoyed the unique view over Lyon and the remnants of a Roman amphitheatre before we returned. This evening, there was a nice party with a local band playing and a superb catering service, which lasted until 1:30 am. The next day, the conference ended at noon, but it was followed by short presentations on the possibilities to work as a biologist in France after finishing the thesis. As I would like to work in France for at least some time, I found this very interesting, especially as they talked about both positions in science and economy.

The conference was very interesting and informative and took place in a friendly atmosphere. Additionally, there was no conference fee and accommodation, meals and all activities were free of charge. So I was able to spend a great time on a four-day-conference just by applying for the travel costs. I definitely recommend taking part in an international meeting like this, and I am looking forward to attend the 6th Ecology & Behaviour meeting which will take place in Tours in 2010."

Rebecca writes: "I attended the annual meeting of the EMPSEB this summer, which is organized by and exclusively for PhD students. Due to the relaxed atmosphere it was easy to get into contact with peers and also the invited speakers from the first day on. All 80 PhD students had to present their work in a short talk, which were in general very professionally held. I was quite impressed by the effort that was put into the feedback factor: Presentations got videotaped and two PhD students from the audience as well as one of the invited speakers had to evaluate the talk by filling in a formula, which were handed to us afterwards. Furthermore, we were assigned to join paper discussions in small groups, where we could share and intensively discuss our opinions and ideas. I liked this well organized conference a lot, because it definitely trains your presentation skills, gets you a lot of objective feedback and you meet many PhDs and maybe future collaborates. Next year it will take place in Poland and I’m really looking forward to it!"

The students write: "In the beginning of May, the EES 2007 cohort plus our coordinator Pleuni Pennings, made a journey to Uppsala and Stockholm, Sweden. We planned this trip primarily to go to Uppsala and spend time with the students from their Master’s program but also to attend a two-day evolution symposium and also to explore and learn about Stockholm and Sweden. The EES master’s program in Munich and the Evolution Master’s program in Uppsala have a mutual exchange, along with Groningen in The Netherlands, and we hoped to begin the process of building bridges between the programs.

Although we only spent one day in Uppsala, it was a great success. The goal of the day was to have all master’s students from each program present their thesis project or current lab rotation work to the rest of the group. All the talks were enthusiastic and professional, and students from both programs asked insightful questions. With no official ‘supervisors’ on-site this was a great example of student initiative and self-organization. We would like to thank the student’s in Uppsala for being excellent hosts. Before leaving, we wandered through Uppsala’s old town and saw the cathedral where the “prince of botany” is buried, Linnaeus.

Our time in Stockholm involved attending an evolution conference entitled: About and beyond, Darwin’s Evolution, and spending time seeing the city. In honor of Darwin’s 150th birthday year, the Natural history museum of Sweden, “Naturhistoriska riksmuseet”, hosted speakers from all over the world to speak about how Darwin's ideas and the development of his evolutionary theories influenced their fields. There was an initial reception dinner, where we were able to dine with some of the people who have shaped our disciplines. Favorite talks included: E.O. Wilson’s introductory talk on biodiversity estimates, Geraat Vermeij, An evolutionary collusion: how enemies create history, and Rosemary and Peter Grant who presented on their life-long work on the evolution of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos. While initially unplanned, this conference became one of the highlights of the trip.

To round out our stay in Sweden we also did plenty of sightseeing. Stockholm is built on 14 islands connected by 57 bridges and it is amazingly beautiful. We spent one day in the Djurgården (Hunting Gardens) a former hunting area for the Swedish king. We visited the Vasa musuem with the only preserved 17th century ship in the world, which sank just 20 minutes after leaving port on its maiden voyage. We saw the Stockholm Concert Hall where the Nobel Prizes are awarded, and even made a boat trip through the archipelago of Stockholm where we saw only a fraction of the 30,000 islands. In addition, we saw one of the workshops that Linneaus used in the historic downtown of Gamla Stan. Unfortunately, I do not think we used much of the Swedish we learned in our preparatory language course, but we definitely exchanged many ‘tack’s’ and enjoyed listening to the melodious language.

All in all it was a great trip, and both of benefit to us personally and the continued connections between our institution and those at the Uppsala Universitet. We extend our thanks to EES program and the DAAD for the financial support.

Timetable

Friday 15th of May: travel to Sweden

Saturday 16th of May: Sightseeing

Sunday 17th of May: Visit to Botanical Garden

Monday 18th of May: Sightseeing and start of Darwin Conference

Tuesday 19th of May: Darwin Conference

Wednesday 20th of May: Darwin Conference

Thursday 21st of May: Uppsala - mini symposium discussing our masters project work

Friday 22 of May: Travel Home"

Anne-Kathrin writes: "During the first week of august 2009, the program “Evolution across scales” from the University of Potsdam, which is also funded by the Volkswagen-Stiftung, offered a very interesting summer school on sexual selection: Male choice vs. female choice. As I think that this aspect of sexual selection – male choice – is often underestimated and it unfortunately is usually not a topic in lectures, I took the chance to participate in this course. It was a very small number of participants as only four other students, all from the Potsdam university, joined the course as well. But this was a very positive fact, as it allowed us to discuss about all the topics we were really interested in. Also the fact that everybody had different research interests enriched the whole course, as we could accumulate examples on the topic of male choice in sexual selection in a lot of different species and learn a lot about ongoing research. But during the course, we did not only read and discuss a lot of literature on current research, but learned also a lot about skills everybody in biology needs: designing experiments, writing scientific papers, choosing the right journals for literature search and also for publishing etc. Altogether, it was a very interesting course in a beautiful city and I learned a lot! Without the EES travel fund, this would not have been possible for me, so thank you!"

Delsy writes: "The conference was organized by the Orchid Quito Society, the Botanical Garden of Quito and the Catholic University of Ecuador. Orchid researchers, mainly from USA, United Kingdom, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Brazil and Ecuador participated in the event and presented their current research on Andean orchid genera. The conference was divided in three sessions: 1) systematic, 2) ecology and pollination, and 3) conservation, one day per session. The conference was really fruitful and I obtained updates in the latest phylogenetic approaches on different taxa (clades) of Orchidaceae. I participated in the conference and contributed with a poster for the ecology session. This poster represents part of my results of my first individual research training (IRT1) of the EES Master Program. I received good comments about my poster, especially from researchers that are working in phylogeny of terrestrial orchids of the Neotropics. The conference was also a good opportunity to make new contacts, like Dr. Gerardo Salazar, as well as meeting again some old orchidiologists friends. During the breaks and lunch time there was also opportunity to discuss with some of the speakers and interchange information. I obtained good advises and coordinated some collaboration for future research. After the conference I took part in a short trip with some of the speakers of the conference. We traveled towards the East of Quito; we visited the Páramo de la Virgen and Papallacta. During the trip we made many stops to watch and take pictures of orchids in their natural habitat. In the highest place that we visited in our trip (more than 4000 m.a.s.l.) we saw Aa and Myrosmodes in bloom, the genera of my current research project. Before my departure from Quito, I also made a one-day visit to the Herbarium of the Catholic University of Ecuador (QCA). There, I revised the orchid Types and specimens of the genera that I am focusing in my Master thesis. I really want to thank to the EES travel fund for support my travel to Ecuador letting me participate of this orchid conference."

Corinna writes: "I visited an ornithological conference at the Edward Grey Institute in Oxford. This conference was aimed for PhD students and early post-docs, so the atmosphere was very relaxed and not stressful at all. Nevertheless, the talks were generally very good and quite professional. In addition, we heard a couple of interesting plenary talks given by invited speakers. There was enough time during coffee and lunch breaks and in the evenings to talk to other participants and exchange ideas and information about research projects. I really enjoyed this meeting and it was a good opportunity to get into contact with other scientists. Thanks to the EES for funding me!"

Anja writes: "The PopGroup Meeting is an informal meeting for scientists working in the fields of Population Genetics or Evolutionary Biology. It takes place every year in the UK somewhen around Christmas. This year, the conference took place in Cardiff (Wales) from the 16th to the 19th of December. It was funded by Applied Biosystems, Qiagen, Heredity and many others. Approximately 150 people came to the meeting this year, mostly from the UK, but also from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, France, the Netherlands Portugal, Russia, Australia, Canada and the US. Every morning, there was a Plenary Talk first which was then followed by three parallel sessions until five o’clock every evening. On Wednesday the 17th, there was a poster session after the talks. All the participants had lunch and dinner together. The Conference Dinner took place in the National Museum of Wales on Thursday the 18th of December.

For the meeting I prepared a talk about the “Evolution of pathogen resistance pathways in wild tomato”. During 15 to 20 minutes I had the opportunity to present the work that has recently been conducted in our lab involving one of my PhD projects to the scientific community. After the talk, people asked interesting questions and gave me useful suggestions concerning my future work. One of the other scientists working on a different but related topic suggested some future cooperation when we realized how many parallels there are between our two study fields.

The PopGroup meeting took place in a nice and familial atmosphere. I found it particularly pleasant that you could seriously talk about science but always in a relaxed way. It was easy to get into contact to other scientists as everybody was open minded and interested in the work of other labs. It was the first time for me that I received feedback from people outside our lab and learned that also other people are interested in my work.

Overall, the PopGroup Meeting was a very interesting and pleasant experience. I enjoyed it a lot and can only recommend it to every student or scientist working in the field of Evolutionary Biology."

Corinna writes: "I visited an ornithological conference at the Edward Grey Institute in Oxford. This conference was aimed for PhD students and early post-docs, so the atmosphere was very relaxed and not stressful at all. Nevertheless, the talks were generally very good and quite professional. In addition, we heard a couple of interesting plenary talks given by invited speakers. There was enough time during coffee and lunch breaks and in the evenings to talk to other participants and exchange ideas and information about research projects. I really enjoyed this meeting and it was a good opportunity to get into contact with other scientists. Thanks to the EES for funding me!"

Markus writes: "The course took place at the Imperial College campus in Silwood Park, Ascot. During the three weeks, Prof. Crawley held 30 lectures on experimental design and generalized linear modelling, covering all kinds of univariate statistical tests from their basics to their proper usage in biological science. In 12 practical classes on statistical computing using the R language, we were trained in applying these tests on real data and in model simplification and interpretation. Besides the lectures and practical training, Prof. Crawley had lots of time to discuss questions not only about the example data. In the lectures, he gave lots of good advice on experimental design and proper planning in general. During the practical classes, he sat down with each student who wanted to discuss their own planning and data analysis. For me, the course was the ideal start into my PhD work. I learned not only to choose the right statistical test and to compute models for linear and non-linear data in R. I learned to organize my data in data frames, transform non-linear data for the fit of a linear model and to carefully search for and find the minimal adequate model that describes the data best. Besides these statistical methods, maybe even more important for my future career, I also learned to plan my experiments, to spot and avoid or deal with pseudoreplication, and to design experiments carefully with the knowledge of how to analyse the collected data afterwards. To conclude, I am glad that I had the opportunity to participate in this course and to meet Michael Crawley. Proper training in statistical methods is crucial for scientists in order to conduct proper scientific work. I would recommend this course to every PhD student and also Postdocs who feel a need for statistical training. It is worth being abroad for three weeks, to come back with fundamentally necessary knowledge for one's future scientific career. I am looking forward to using my new skills in my future projects."

Vera writes: "From the 2nd till 20th of February 2009 I participated in the Winter School of Ecology, which was organized by the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. The Winter School took place in South and Mid Finland at Lammi Biological Station and Konnevesi Research Station, which were very suitable places. The Winter School consisted of three courses: “Winter Limnology”, “Winter Ecology”, and “Population Ecology and Population Cycles”. I could aquire a lot of new and valuable information about the special field of Winter Ecology. This includes topics such as adaptations of plants and animals to winter conditions or conditions prevailing in lakes during long and constant cold winter. I also got a very good overview on the ecology of cyclic populations in Skandinavia, like for example some vole, lemming or butterfly populations. Some lectures also dealed with global change issues. Besides attending lectures, we students could learn new field and laboratory methods, like for example: taking samples and doing measurements on frozen lakes, conducting water and plankton analyses in the laboratory, carrying out behavioural studies on voles in large outdoor enclosures, identifying animal snow tracks and measuring physical properties of snow. In all courses we students participated actively by giving presentations and having discussions on the results of our field work and by giving presentations about theoretical topics related to the course issues or about the work we carry out at our home universities. In that way I could present my diploma thesis work. In all, the Winter School of Ecology supplemented my studies very well and by participating I could even broaden my theoretical and practical knowledge in my current research field of Aquatic Ecology. In addition, I could further gain experience in giving presentations to an international audience and got into contact with many kind and interesting people."

Max writes: "I am a Diploma student in the group of Dr. Volker Witte and Prof. Dr. Susanne Foitzik. The EES global learning fund helped me to finance a two-month field trip to Malaysia, which allowed me to collect and observe the animals, which I study in my Diploma thesis, in their natural environment.

The aim of my thesis is to analyze morphological adaptations of myrmecophiles, organisms living inside ant colonies, to their life in an extreme habitat. Therefore I collected myrmecophile beetles, snails, phorid flies, silverfish, mites, collemboles and spiders during the migration of the host ant Leptogenys distinguenda. Moreover I used different techniques to sample leaf litter, in which I searched for organisms closely related to the myrmecophile intruders. We suggest that life inside an ant colony imposes completely different selection pressures on myrmecophiles compared to the lifestyles of their non myrmecophilic relatives. Hence, myrmecophiles evolved highly specific adaptations, among others special morphological structures, to cohabitate with their well-fortified host. The morphological analyses will be conducted at the ZSM in collaboration with Dr. Roland Melzer and we will use SEM to visualize the differences.

The field trip to Malaysia not only enabled me to collect the organisms necessary for my Diploma thesis but also increased my biological, social and cultural knowledge. I had the opportunity to be part of a group of enthusiastic researchers, which introduced me to the rainforest and showed me a lot of its flora and fauna. Besides they introduced me to the topic of my thesis by giving me a better understanding of the life of the ants and their myrmecophiles. The exchange of ideas helped everybody in the group to improve their research procedures and is crucial for scientific work. Therefore I’m grateful that the teamwork within the group gave me insights into different research topics and helped me improve my collecting strategies. Apart from that, the everyday life gave me a broad insight into the diverse Malayan culture. I experienced a different kind of working mentality, different types of social interactions, different conventions and rules and very tasty culinary habits .

This field trip was very inspiring and instructive and I would like to thank the whole Team for this unforgettable experience, which the EES helped to realize."