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"The Evolution Directory"

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Yes, Newfoundland does have wolves - and wildlife officials are studying them

Inter-breeding of canids, coyotes and wolves is not uncommon and it can be hard to know an animal's genetic mix. That said, provincial wildlife is welcoming information on unusual canid sightings and canid carcasses from throughout Newfoundland and Labrador to help inform ongoing research.

From the CBC News-2026-10-7:14:5:79

Ottawa launches new national AI council to advise on safety, deployment

Prime Minister Mark Carney's new national council on artificial intelligence is meant to provide the government with guidance on the evolution of its AI strategy and on making the technology safer.

From the CBC News-2026-10-5:14:5:78

Gold beetles to Darwin's finds - the 70 million museum artefacts going online

More than 70 million specimens from 100 UK collections will be put into an online digital museum

From the BBC News-2026-9-30:8:5:76

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Since the 15th April 2026, EvolDir is managed by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). We are transitioning EvolDir to a brand-new dynamic and interactive website, but this will take time. There will be small changes to how EvolDir works until this transition is complete. For example, as a temporary measure, EvolDir will send email alerts twice weekly as a batch as opposed to multiple daily posts. The daily alert service will resume once the transition is complete.

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The EvolDir is directed toward evolutionary biologists, population biologists and scientists in related areas.

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Royal Society Publishing has recently published a theme issue of Philosophical Transactions B under the 'Subscribe to Open' 2026 initiative: Ecological epigenetics at the intersection of behaviour and life history variation in non-model animals compiled and edited by Blanca Jimeno, Mark Ravinet, Jesús Martínez-Padilla and Kees van Oers, and the articles are FREE to access at www.bit.ly/PTB1955.

A print version is also available at the special price of £40.00 per issue from sales@royalsociety.org.

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon, from Vintage Canada, (Mar 21).

Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin's Strangest Idea, by Matt Ridley, from Harper. (Mar 7).

The journal Insects has a call for papers for a special issue on "Evolutionary and Ecological Mechanisms of Plant Defense Against Insects". (Feb 28).

Mismatch Theories in Evolutionary Medicine: A Philosophical Exploration, by Jonas Pold, from Springer. (Feb 21).

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SELECTED JOURNAL TOC's

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SELECTED FORTHCOMING ARTICLES

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Oct 9 20:00	Reply to Li & Zhang: Adaptive evolution of stop-loss RNA editing in Fusarium graminearum - Yanfei Du, et al. (PNAS)
Oct 9 20:00	A-to-I RNA editing-mediated stop codon read-through in Fusarium graminearum is not generally adaptive - Jiachen Li, et al. (PNAS)

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Metagenomic Data Analysis of Microbial Communities (MGMC01) – Applications for Evolutionary Biology
26–30 October 2026 | 25 hours | £400 | Live Online
https://prstats.org/course/metagenomic-data-analysis-of-microbial-communities-mgmc01/
Delivered by Dr Jeferyd Yepes, a bioinformatician and computational biologist specialising in metagenomics, microbial genomics, reproducible bioinformatics workflows and computational analysis of complex microbial communities.
Learn how to analyse microbial communities using metagenomic data, from experimental design and raw sequencing data through quality control, taxonomic profiling, diversity analysis, assembly, genome reconstruction and functional interpretation.
For evolutionary biologists, metagenomic approaches provide powerful tools for investigating microbial diversity, genomic variation, community differentiation and functional evolution without requiring organisms to be cultured individually. By combining taxonomic, genomic and functional information, researchers can examine how microbial communities and genomes vary among hosts, populations, species, environments and evolutionary contexts.
What you'll gain
Understand the core concepts and applications of metagenomics
Design robust metagenomic studies with appropriate replication and controls
Understand sample collection, storage and DNA/RNA extraction
Compare 16S/ITS marker-gene and whole-genome shotgun approaches
Understand short- and long-read sequencing strategies
Perform quality control and preprocessing of sequencing data
Identify and remove low-quality reads and contaminants
Work with OTUs and ASVs
Perform taxonomic classification and microbial-community profiling
Calculate and interpret alpha and beta diversity
Compare microbial communities among biological or environmental conditions
Perform differential abundance analyses
Understand de novo metagenomic assembly
Apply binning approaches to recover individual microbial genomes
Reconstruct Metagenome-Assembled Genomes (MAGs)
Assess MAG completeness and contamination
Perform genome annotation and taxonomic classification
Explore functional and pathway-level information
Apply statistical and visualisation approaches to metagenomic data
Apply FAIR and reproducible-data principles to metagenomic research
Course format
Dates: 26–30 October 2026
Duration: 5 days, 5 hours per day – 25 hours total
Format: Live online
Combination of theoretical instruction and practical computational analysis
Targeted and shotgun metagenomics covered
Practical microbial-community analysis and MAG reconstruction
All sessions recorded
30 days' access to recordings
30 days of post-course email support
Digital certificate of attendance
Course fee: £400
Who is this course for?
This course will be particularly relevant to evolutionary biologists and researchers working in:
Evolutionary genomics
Microbial evolution
Microbial ecology
Molecular evolution
Host–microbiome evolution
Comparative microbiome research
Population and community genomics
Environmental genomics
Molecular ecology
Evolutionary ecology
Metagenomics
Bioinformatics
Genome evolution and functional diversity
It is particularly useful for researchers interested in understanding how microbial communities, genomes and functional capabilities differ among organisms, populations, environments or evolutionary contexts.
Participants should be familiar with R/RStudio, including basic data manipulation and importing and exporting data. Familiarity with UNIX/Linux is also beneficial.
Why take this course?
Microorganisms represent an enormous component of biological diversity, yet many cannot readily be cultured and studied individually. Metagenomics provides a way to investigate these organisms directly from biological and environmental samples, opening opportunities to study microbial diversity, genomic variation and functional differences across ecological and evolutionary systems.
Targeted approaches such as 16S and ITS sequencing allow researchers to characterise and compare microbial communities, while whole-genome shotgun metagenomics provides access to substantially richer genomic and functional information. Assembly and binning can go further by reconstructing Metagenome-Assembled Genomes, allowing individual microbial genomes to be recovered from complex communities.
These approaches can contribute to evolutionary questions involving microbial diversification, host-associated microbial communities, environmental adaptation, community differentiation and the evolution of functional capabilities. The ability to compare taxonomic and functional profiles across samples also provides a framework for investigating how microbial communities differ across hosts, environments and biological conditions.
MGMC01 therefore provides evolutionary researchers with a practical foundation for moving from raw metagenomic sequencing data to community-, genome- and function-level biological interpretation, while developing reproducible workflows suitable for modern evolutionary and genomic research.
Please feel free to share this course with colleagues, friends, research groups, labs, and others within your institute, organisation, or wider research network.
Learn more & enrol
Metagenomic Data Analysis of Microbial Communities (MGMC01)
https://prstats.org/course/metagenomic-data-analysis-of-microbial-communities-mgmc01/
Questions?
Email: oliver@prstats.org
Best wishes,
Oliver Hooker
PR Stats

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Conferences	Graduate positions
Jobs	Other	Archive
Postdocs	Workshops/Courses	Answers

last.day               41 KB        Oct  9 16:51
last.day-1             32 KB        Oct  6 11:41
last.day-2             69 KB        Oct  3 08:32
Mnth_Review.pdf       629 KB        Oct  3 08:41
Mnth_Review-1.pdf     495 KB        Sep  1 18:07
Mnth_Review-2.pdf     515 KB        Jul 31 11:40

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Welcome to EvolDir "The Evolution Directory"

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Welcome to EvolDir
"The Evolution Directory"