Stearns Graduate Student Prize

ESEB and the Journ­al of Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy (JEB) award an annu­al prize for the best gradu­ate papers pub­lished in the journ­al in that cal­en­dar year. The award is named after Steph­en Ste­arns, who played a major role in estab­lish­ing both JEB and ESEB (art­icle).

The Ste­arns Gradu­ate Stu­dent Prize is aimed at recog­nising out­stand­ing gradu­ate (Mas­ters or PhD) research. While pre­vi­ously awar­ded to a single win­ner, since 2022 the JEB edit­or­i­al board selects up to three joint awardees each year. This change recog­nises the fact that research excel­lence comes in many facets, ran­ging from the innov­at­ive nature of the ques­tions addressed, over the tech­nic­al chal­lenges in per­form­ing the research to the sci­entif­ic and soci­et­al impact of the results.

The award includes an invit­a­tion to attend the ESEB Con­gress (regis­tra­tion fee covered), where awardees present their work in a ded­ic­ated Ste­arns Prize symposium.

Information

Eligibility

The Ste­arns Prize recog­nises the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion of gradu­ate stu­dents to research pub­lished in JEB. Gradu­ate stu­dents are eli­gible for the prize if they led both the research described in the art­icle and the writ­ing of the manu­script itself (super­visors will be asked to con­firm this before awards are made). Reflect­ing their role, we would then also usu­ally expect the stu­dent to be the lead (first) author. We expect papers to be sub­mit­ted with­in two years of com­plet­ing the project.

Nomination

Stu­dent-led art­icles that are eli­gible for the Ste­arns Prize are iden­ti­fied at the point of sub­mis­sion through a ques­tion “Was this study led by a gradu­ate stu­dent?” in the Schol­arOne form. Any manu­script for which the cor­res­pond­ing author answers “Yes” and iden­ti­fies the stu­dent among the authors will, if accep­ted, be auto­mat­ic­ally con­sidered for the Ste­arns Prize in the year of its pub­lic­a­tion. Self-nom­in­a­tion is encour­aged, where the gradu­ate stu­dent lead­ing the study is also the sub­mit­ting and cor­res­pond­ing author.

Selection criteria

All papers pub­lished in JEB that were entered at the point of sub­mis­sion as above are con­sidered for the Ste­arns Prize. Edit­ors will be asked to short­l­ist art­icles from the stu­dent-led papers they handled based on the fol­low­ing criteria:

• addresses an innov­at­ive research ques­tion or approaches the ques­tion in an innov­at­ive way
• con­tains tech­nic­ally chal­len­ging work
• dis­plays a par­tic­u­larly robust approach to answer­ing the research question
• demon­strates com­mit­ment to Open Sci­ence through the qual­ity of the archived mater­i­al accom­pa­ny­ing the art­icle (e.g. detail of readme files, organ­isa­tion, pres­ence of code) that max­im­ises the poten­tial for reusab­il­ity and repro­du­cib­il­ity of the research.

Short­l­is­ted papers are then ranked using the same cri­ter­ia as above by a pan­el of edit­or­i­al board mem­bers, who have no con­flicts of interest and who did not handle the papers, to min­im­ise bias towards a par­tic­u­lar field. The pan­el will be instruc­ted to be aware of poten­tial biases in their eval­u­ation i.e. gender, nation­al­ity, geo­graph­ic loc­a­tion. The top papers will be awar­ded the Ste­arns Prize for that cal­en­dar year.

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2024 Winners

Théo Bod­ineau

This research paper was driv­en by the need to bet­ter under­stand rel­at­ive con­tri­bu­tions of breed­ing dates and thermal con­di­tions dur­ing gest­a­tion on fit­ness of females and their off­spring in vivi­par­ous rep­tiles. I am hon­oured to receive a Ste­arns Prize for this research which was con­duc­ted as part of my PhD at the Insti­tute of Eco­logy and Envir­on­ment­al Sci­ences of Par­is, Sor­bonne Uni­ver­sity (France), in col­lab­or­a­tion with my PhD advisors Sandrine Meylan, Pierre de Ville­mereuil, Jean-François Le Gal­liard and field engin­eers from the CEREEP-Eco­tron IleDeFrance (France), Beat­riz Decen­cière and Simon Agostini. We exposed females of the com­mon liz­ard (Zootoca vivi­para) to con­trast­ing thermal scen­ari­os (cold vs. hot treat­ment) dur­ing gest­a­tion and quan­ti­fied effects of par­tur­i­tion dates and thermal treat­ment on life-his­tory traits of females and their off­spring for one year. Over­all, our res­ults sug­gest that par­tur­i­tion date has a great­er impact than thermal con­di­tions dur­ing gest­a­tion on life-his­tory traits of females and juven­iles. Moreover, our find­ings reveal a poten­tial moth­er-off­spring con­flict regard­ing the optim­isa­tion of par­tur­i­tion dates: while earli­er par­tur­i­tion enhances juven­ile sur­viv­al, growth, and recruit­ment, it sim­ul­tan­eously imposes ener­get­ic costs on preg­nant females. Although numer­ous stud­ies focused on the dir­ect effects of alter­a­tions in incub­a­tion tem­per­at­ures on rep­tile life-his­tory traits, our res­ults high­light the import­ance of con­sid­er­ing the role of breed­ing phen­o­logy in assess­ing the short- and long-term effects of thermal devel­op­ment­al plasticity.

Mari­on Leménager

I am deeply honored to receive the Ste­arns Prize in recog­ni­tion of my research on the intraspe­cif­ic evol­u­tion of flor­al vari­ation with­in pol­lin­a­tion sys­tems involving both spe­cial­ists and gen­er­al­ists. This work was car­ried out dur­ing my PhD at the Insti­tut de Recher­che en Bio­lo­gie Végétale, Uni­ver­sity of Montreal, and Montreal Botan­ic­al Garden, under the ment­or­ship of Simon Joly.

The study was driv­en by a desire to bet­ter under­stand how vari­ation with­in spe­cies shapes broad­er evol­u­tion­ary pat­terns. Centered on the niche vari­ation hypo­thes­is, we explored how the broad­er eco­lo­gic­al niches of gen­er­al­ist spe­cies may lead to great­er mor­pho­lo­gic­al diversity—either through the pres­ence of diverse spe­cial­ists with­in a spe­cies or through relaxed select­ive pres­sures on true gen­er­al­ist individuals.

Focus­ing on Anti­llean Gesneriaceae—a trop­ic­al plant group that has repeatedly transitioned between pol­lin­a­tion by hum­ming­birds and gen­er­al­ist systems—we examined how flor­al shape, par­tic­u­larly corolla tubu­lar­ity and curvature, var­ies with­in spe­cies. Using geo­met­ric morpho­met­rics, ances­tral recon­struc­tions, and meth­ods that dif­fer­ently accoun­ted for the high dimen­sion­al­ity of mor­pho­lo­gic­al traits, the ances­tral recon­struc­tion of pol­lin­a­tion syn­dromes over time, and the error asso­ci­ated with the estim­a­tion of the intraspe­cif­ic vari­ance, we eval­u­ated pat­terns of intraspe­cif­ic variation.

Our find­ings par­tially sup­port the niche vari­ation hypo­thes­is. While gen­er­al­ists showed more vari­ation over­all, espe­cially in tubu­lar­ity, not all aspects of flor­al shape fol­lowed this trend. Moreover, account­ing for sampling error high­lighted the import­ance of robust data­sets in evol­u­tion­ary studies.

This research under­scores the dynam­ic inter­play between eco­lo­gic­al strategies and mor­pho­lo­gic­al evol­u­tion and high­lights how pol­lin­at­or inter­ac­tions can influ­ence biod­iversity pat­terns across scales.

Quinn McCal­lum

I’m hon­oured to accept the Ste­arns Gradu­ate Stu­dent Prize for this research, which I con­duc­ted at UBC as part of my Honour’s thes­is under Dr. Dar­ren Irwin. Our goal with this study was to char­ac­ter­ize pat­terns of gen­om­ic dif­fer­en­ti­ation between Zono­tri­chia atri­ca­pilla (the Golden-crowned Spar­row) and Zono­tri­chia leu­co­phrys (the White-crowned Spar­row) using Gen­o­typ­ing-by-Sequen­cing (GBS). Pre­vi­ous work had found that these spe­cies share mito­chon­dri­al hap­lo­types des­pite marked dif­fer­ences in phen­o­type and allozyme sequences, a pat­tern attrib­uted to mito­chon­dri­al intro­gres­sion. Con­trast­ingly, we uncovered extremely high rel­at­ive dif­fer­en­ti­ation and increased abso­lute dif­fer­en­ti­ation across a large region of the Z‑chromosome, sug­gest­ing a region that has res­isted intro­gres­sion between these spe­cies. Fur­ther­more, pat­terns of link­age dis­equi­lib­ri­um in this region were con­sist­ent with reduced recom­bin­a­tion between the two spe­cies, but not with­in each spe­cies, a pat­tern that may be the res­ult of a chro­mo­somal inver­sion. Addi­tion­ally, we found evid­ence of admix­ture between two pre­vi­ously allo­patric sub­spe­cies of Z. leu­co­phrys. Broadly, I’m inter­ested in how eco­lo­gic­al traits and geo­graph­ic­al fea­tures influ­ence diver­si­fic­a­tion, the gen­om­ic archi­tec­ture of loc­al adapt­a­tion and repro­duct­ive isol­a­tion, and intro­gres­sion as source of adapt­ive genet­ic vari­ation. For my PhD, I’ve moved to Louisi­ana State Uni­ver­sity, where I’m advised by Dr. Nich­olas Mason. My cur­rent research uses com­par­at­ive phylo­geo­graphy to study how eco­lo­gic­al and life his­tory traits affect pop­u­la­tion struc­ture and gene flow in high Andean birds.

Kane Strat­man

It was an hon­or to receive the Ste­arns Prize for my recent study, which con­cluded my PhD research on the dynam­ics of sexu­al selec­tion on the well-known high-energy mat­ing call of male East­ern Gray Treefrogs (Hyla ver­sicol­or). My advisor Ger­linde Hoebel and I aimed to quanti­fy the dis­par­ity between a) what male advert­isers are cap­able of dis­play­ing and b) what female choosers seek in an ideal mate. We focused not on pop­u­la­tion-level estim­ates of pref­er­ence, but rather on pat­terns of with­in-pop­u­la­tion level pref­er­ences, which may cap­ture con­flict­ing but bio­lo­gic­ally mean­ing­ful mate choice dynam­ics. Our study revealed that, across three sep­ar­ate ele­ments of a male treefro­g’s mat­ing sig­nal, at most 62% of indi­vidu­al females exhib­it pref­er­ences con­sist­ent with the pop­u­la­tion aver­age. In the case of a male’s call­ing rate, we dis­covered a nearly dicho­tom­ous female response to high intens­ity call val­ues, greatly com­plic­at­ing any mod­el of male mat­ing strategy in this sys­tem. Pop­u­la­tion estim­ates of sexu­al selec­tion on any giv­en advert­ise­ment trait may, as we demon­strate, accur­ately mod­el the dir­ec­tion of selec­tion, whilst miss­ing entirely the primary basis for mat­ing decisions in the wild. Hid­den vari­ation in mat­ing pref­er­ences among-choosers may explain why lower res­ol­u­tion meas­ures of pref­er­ence shapes sig­ni­fic­antly under­es­tim­ate vari­ation in male fitness.

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Previous Winners

2023

Mat­thew C. Farnitano

“Strong post­mat­ing repro­duct­ive isol­a­tion in Mim­u­lus sec­tion Eun­anus” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14219)

Jason R. Laurich

“Genet­ic archi­tec­ture of mul­tiple mutu­al­isms and mat­ing sys­tem in Turn­era ulmi­fo­lia” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14098)

Tian Xia

“Repro­duct­ive isol­a­tion via diver­gent gen­it­al mor­pho­logy due to cas­cade rein­force­ment in Ohomopter­us ground beetles” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14116)

2022

Haley Kenyon

“Exper­i­ment­al test of selec­tion against hybrid­iz­a­tion as a driver of avi­an sig­nal diver­gence” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14058)

Subham Mridha

“Enforced spe­cial­iz­a­tion fosters mutu­al cheat­ing and not divi­sion of labour in the bac­teri­um Pseudo­mo­nas aer­u­ginosa” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14001)

Don­al Smith

“Chal­len­ging a host–pathogen paradigm: Sus­cept­ib­il­ity to chytri­dio­my­cos­is is decoupled from genet­ic erosion” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13987)

2021

Juli­ette Amini­an Biquet

“Phen­o­typ­ic plas­ti­city drives phen­o­lo­gic­al changes in a Medi­ter­ranean blue tit pop­u­la­tion” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13950)

2020

Jack Com­mon

“Diversity in CRISPR-based immunity pro­tects sus­cept­ible gen­o­types by restrict­ing phage spread and evol­u­tion” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13638)

2020 – Run­ners-up were Bruno Genev­cius, Graeme Keais, and Alex­an­dra Cones.

2019

Thomas Keaney

“Mother’s curse and indir­ect genet­ic effects: do males mat­ter to mito­chon­dri­al gen­ome evol­u­tion?” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13561)

2019 – Run­ners-up were Nadia S. Sloan and Daniel Shane Wright.

2018

James Santan­gelo

“Herb­i­vores and plant defenses affect selec­tion on plant repro­duct­ive traits more strongly than pol­lin­at­ors” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13392).

2018 – Run­ners-up were Eva Troi­an­ou, Peter Mor­an, Urtzi Enriquez-Urzelai, Joshua Alpern, and Casper van der Kooi.

2017

Jack Colic­chio

“Trans­gen­er­a­tion­al Effects Alter Plant Defense and Res­ist­ance in Nature” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13042)

2017 – Run­ners-up were Keely Brown, Zacharia Grochau-Wright, Ryosuke Irit­ani, Kim Kirch­hoff , and Erin Mor­ris­on.

2016

Amaranta Fontcuberta

“Extreme genet­ic diversity in asexu­al grass thrips pop­u­la­tions” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12843)

2016 – Run­ners-up were Matt Wilkins and Karl Grieshop.

2015

James Licht­en­stein

“Sim­il­ar pat­terns of fre­quency-depend­ent selec­tion on anim­al per­son­al­it­ies emerge in three spe­cies of social spiders” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12651)

2015 – Run­ners-up were Arthur Porto, Evan Her­sh, and Dami­en Farine.

2014

Ellie Har­ris­on

“Sex drives intra­cel­lu­lar con­flict in yeast” (https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12408).

2014 – Run­ners-up were Kay Lucek and Sean Lee.