My symposium paper from the 2014 Philosophy of Science Association meeting is out in Philosophy of Science (Herron, M. D. 2016. Fitness and individuality in complex life cycles. Philos. Sci. 83:828–834). The symposium, “Complex Life Cycles, Reproduction and Evolution,” also includes papers by James Griesemer, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Maureen O’Malley.
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New postdoc joins the lab
Katrin Schmidt has finished her Ph.D. and crossed the Atlantic to join Team Chlamy at Georgia Tech. Technically, she’s a Research Scientist until her paperwork clears, but she has defended her dissertation on thermal adaptation mechanisms in the model diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana at the University of East Anglia.
Philosophy of Science article online early
My new article “Fitness and individuality in complex life cycles” is available as “Just accepted” at Philosophy of Science. I presented an early version of this paper in a symposium organized by Maureen O’Malley, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and James Griesemer at the Philosophy of Science Association Meeting in Chicago two years ago.
Phycomorph 2016
I gave a keynote address on “Development and evolution of Volvox and related algae” at the Phycomorph Second Working Group Meeting in Limassol, Cyprus on September 30th. Phycomorph is a European research group concerned with macroalgal reproduction and development. I had a great time and learned a ton about development in brown, red, and ulvophyte green algae.
What we study
The Herron Lab at Georgia Tech studies various aspects of the evolutionary origins of multicellularity through a combination of experimental, theoretical, and comparative approaches. Our main model systems are the volvocine algae (Volvox and kin) and their close unicellular relative, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
New Postdoc
Kimberly Chen, a grad student in Greg Velicer’s lab, will be joining Team Chlamy as a NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoc at the end of summer. Kimberly’s PhD work involves small RNAs that control fruiting body development in myxobacteria, and she is broadly interested in questions related to social evolution (for example, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790314000049).