Today, MSc Kati Saarinen has been granted a permission to defend her thesis: The evolution of temperature tolerance and invasiveness in a fluctuating environment. YAY! Final climax for 4 years of work at 8.1.2016. Prof. Jacintha Ellers will act as an opponent. Thanks to pre-examiners for their good job; Marjo Saastamoinen & Alex Jousset. 

4 Abstracts submitted from our group to @OIKOS2016. Waiting for exiting meeting in Turku. ca. 14 years since finishing up my genetics studies at UTU. Time flies! #old_fart

Roghaieh's first paper on F. columnaris population structure (or lack of it) in BMC microbiology: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/15/243

Four talks by us at #EECD2015 in Tvärminne . Some photos below.

lots of ATGC... "Filename: Serratia_marcescens_final-consensus.zip" has arrived. YAY!!
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Check out our latest paper on virulence evolution by Mikonranta, Mappes, Laakso & Ketola. Within-host evolution decreases virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen, in BMC Evolutionary Biology 15:165 online now!

 Did you know that removal of transmission virulence tradeoff does not always lead to increased virulence? Our results suggest that bacteria could try to make most out of the host also without killing it. 

ESEB2015 here we come. Come, listen and see our presentations.

Monday (symposium 14-2):
15:05 Ketola: Evolution in multispecies bacterial communities is sensitive to community composition
16:15 Saarinen:  Rescued by evolution - problems ahead: Adapting to fluctuating environment increases invasiveness

Posters: 

123 Ashrafi et al., Broadness of thermal tolerance is linked to decreased virulence in fish pathogen - does climate change alter disease epidemics?

193 Mikonranta et al. Within-host evolution decreases virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen

161 Kronholm & Ketola. Contribution of epigenetic mechanisms to phenotypic plasticity in

Neurospora crassa

Check out my latest paper on environmental fluctuations: Tolerance curves fail to indicate adaptations to fluctuations. This is important as from plant and animal breeding to conservation biology tolerance curves are used to make predictions on how species and genotypes survive different environments, also fluctuating ones. 

Ketola & Saarinen 2015 J. Evol. Biol. 28:800-806 [reprint]