We are proud to announce that the NUS biodiversity group was very respectably represented at this year’s Faculty Teaching, Research and Service Awards 2009.

From Biodiversity, the list of winners include: Prof. Chou Loke Meng and Mr N. Sivasothi, for the Faculty Teaching Excellence award (both absent from this picture), Assoc. Prof. Rudolf Meier for the Honour Roll award, Andie, YC, JC,  Laura, Eunice and myself, for the Teaching Assistant (Part-Time) award, and Darren and Tommy for the Service award.

Some of this year’s winners.

N. Puniamoorthy, M. R. B. Ismail, D. S. H. Tan & R. Meier 2009, “From kissing to belly stridulation: comparative analysis reveals surprising diversity, rapid evolution, and much homoplasy in the mating behaviour of 27 species of sepsid flies (Diptera: Sepsidae).” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22, 2146-2156.

(Careful of impressionable minds looking over your shoulder while watching this)

The full list of videos can be accessed on the evolutionary biology website here

We had the privilege of hosting the 28th annual meeting of the Willi Hennig society at the Singapore Botanic Gardens this year, making us the first Asian host for this international conference. Lasting from the 22nd to the 26th of June, it saw the active participation of its members, who contributed talks and posters relating to the science of phylogenetic systematics.

As evidenced by this photo, much fun was had by all.

The Willi Hennig society also awards up to three prizes for outstanding student presentations at each annual meeting. These include the Willi Hennig Award, the Lars Brundin Award and the Don Rosen Award. For Hennig XXVIII, the awardees were Maria-Theresa Aguado (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain), Sujatha Narayanan Kutty (NUS, Singapore) and Gwynne Lim Shimin (NUS, Singapore) respectively. This marks the third year in a row where students from Evolab have attended Hennig meetings and consequently won at least one of these awards for their presentations.

Hennig XXIV (2005):  Kathy Feng-Yi Su (Hennig award), Farhan B Ali (Rosen award), Nalini Puniamoorthy and Shiyang Kwong (Honorable mentions)

Hennig XXVI (2007): Kathy Feng-Yi Su (Brundin award)

Congratulations to Sujatha and (more awkwardly) myself! You can see us proudly displaying our awards during the banquet below.

More information about the conference and the associated mini-symposium “Darwin, Wallace and Evolution: Celebrating a major paradigm shift in science” can be found at NUShub and on Reuters’ Environment Blog.

Thank you all for your wonderful show of enthusiasm and support for the event! We are amazed and pleased by the high level of interest that so many of you are showing by signing up. Sadly, registration is now closed. For the lucky 400 who managed to sign up in time, please remember that it’s today: Monday, the 22nd of June. The venue for the event is LT26 (not LT31), and it begins at 6.30pm sharp. Although we are no longer registering new participants, you are perfectly welcome to try your luck (as there might be a free seat or two!).

Dear participants,

Due to the overwhelming response, we have moved the mini-symposium from LT 31 to LT26 in order to accommodate everyone. Please note the change in venue. If you are driving, park at carpark 10 (CP10), as car park 9 is closed for construction. Please enter along Science Drive 1, and cut across the canteen.

For clarity, we provide a screengrab of the map below:

Hope to see you all there (LT 26, not LT 31) next Monday!

Edit 170609: One more thing: For those of us with dietary restrictions, the buffet dinner provided after the talk is prepared by a halal certified caterer. There will also be vegetarian options.

We are pleased to announce that the book “Diptera Diversity: Status, Challenges and Tools” has been published. Prof Meier is one of three editors of this hotly-anticipated book for all dipterists.

This very attractive book not only comes complete with comprehensive information about Diptera biodiversity, it also includes gorgeous colour pictures and photos of flies, maps (and charts). It retails for €119/US$186 here.

Some of us may remember Dr. Patrick Grootaert from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, a dolichopodid expert and regular collaborator with the NUS Biodiversity group. In this book, he authors a fascinating chapter on the diversity and taxonomic challenges of Oriental Diptera. He is currently here in Singapore to lay out the framework for the SMIP (Singapore Mangrove Insect Project) and to provide us with vast quantities of Belgian chocolate.

Incidentally, Prof Meier also coauthors 2 chapters with our biodiversity alumni, Gaurav G. Vaidya and Guanyang Zhang, who is currently at UC Riverside completing his PhD on the systematics of reduviids (assassin bugs).

Here’s a shoutout to the Heteropteran Systematics Lab @ UCR, current home of two ex-evolab denizens.

This international journal publishes research on invertebrate systematics and phylogeny.

Congratulations to Prof Meier! He joins an international team of editors including:

Andy Austin The University of Adelaide, Adelaide
Shane Ahyong National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington
Bob Anderson Museum of Nature, Ottawa
Lyn Cook University of Queensland, Brisbane
Greg Edgecombe The Natural History Museum, London
Gonzalo Giribet Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
Heather Proctor University of Alberta, Edmonton
Greg Rouse Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla
Nikolaj Scharff Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen
Jon Waters University of Otago, Dunedin

The onward march towards global domination by the spineless continues, without regard for time zones…

Prof. Meier has recently been made the vice president of the Willi Hennig society. Founded in 1980, it promotes the field of phylogenetic systematics, or cladistics. This refers to the classification of species based on evolutionary ancestry.  The latter is also the name of the ISI-ranked journal which is published on the society’s behalf.

He will also be organising Hennig XXVIII, the 2009 annual meeting in Singapore. This marks the society’s first meeting in Asia. This decision to hold the meeting in Singapore recognises the increasing strength of systematic research being done here and in the region. Specific dates have yet to be determined but dates within June and July look most likely.

Congratulations Prof Meier!