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Does anyone know of a good updated figure likes this showing the correlation between transposons and genome size? No taxa preference. @transposableman.bsky.social?

Some fantastic recollections of UCL genetics from Cedric Smith via @wtf-r-species.bsky.social below. Featuring lots of Fisher and Haldane.

First Monday of August tomorrow.

Another example: Ernst Mayr not being happy with sharing the Crafoord Prize with George Williams. Remembered by David Haig.

OUP's Michael Rodgers (who published The Selfish Gene) once tried to get John Maynard Smith to write Haldane's biography. JMS decline, but instead offered him The Major Transitions in Evolution.

Gabby Dover proposing a 'symbolic glass of champagne' to Sydney Brenner for the decline of 'replicator selection'.

Amartya Sen, Garry Runciman, Ian Hacking... and Richard Dawkins. Quite the line up for 1979-1980 lecture programme for the British Society for the Philosophy of Science.

Michael Singer tries to get a job back in England after doing his PhD at Stanford.

Can the stature of a prize be diminished by its recipients? Sewall Wright thought less of the Balzac Prize after learning that Ernst Mayr had also received it.

New preprint: 'Internal evolutionary conflicts: a conceptual synthesis and mathematical primer' Really fun collaboration with @gauravathreya.bsky.social, @shikharabhat.bsky.social, @yagmurerten.bsky.social, and @tom-is-kean.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Internal evolutionary conflicts: a conceptual synthesis and mathematical primerInternal evolutionary conflicts arise when elements within an organism have diverging fitness interests. Examples range from meiotic drive and cytoplasmic male sterility to transposable elements and s...www.biorxiv.org

Today is the 5th anniversary of The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution. Writing it was one of the most fun and intellectual rewarding experiences of my career so far. Very thankful to everyone who has read, discussed, taught, reviewed, and recommended it over the past five years.

Keep an eye out for this fun paper!

What did E.B. Ford do during World War 2?

In 1982, the final year exam in zoology at Oxford contained the following question: ”Assess the contribution of E.B. Ford to genetics.” Afterwards, Ford was asked for his own view on the question. This was his answer:

Many good guesses (including @timcoulson.bsky.social!). The answer is Arthur Cain.

Hint: It was said of him that "On his good days he could charm anybody and on his bad days he could offend anybody".

TUESDAY TRIVIA What Fellow of the Royal Society wrote a biography of Erasmus Darwin, had it rejected by two publishers for containing too many quotations, and, in a huff, decided not to publish it but instead deposited the manuscript in the University of Liverpool library where it still is?

And here is @andygardner.bsky.social's nice contribution to the same @jevbio.bsky.social special issue on internal conflicts: academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Inclusive fitness for the conflicted individualAbstract. The theory of inclusive fitness explains the process and purpose of social adaptation. However, the canonical derivation of inclusive fitness assacademic.oup.com

Do interactions between different selfish genetic elements matter? Great paper by Jonathan Wilson and Nina Wedell for our forthcoming special issue on internal conflicts for @jevbio.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Ford is often described as a misogynist, and there are plenty of stories to back that up. Perhaps ironically, then, he owed his All Souls fellowship to MR putting his name forward. That is why, for the the first few years in college, he was known as ‘Mrs Lane’s fellow’.