Programme

• 9:00 - 13:00: Registration - Patio
• 12:30 - 12:45: Opening of meeting - Promotiezaal
• 12:45 - 13:30: Invited talk 1 - Promotiezaal
• 13:30 - 15:00: Session 1 talks - Promotiezaal
• 15:00 - 15:30: Coffee break - Patio
  
• 15:30 - 17:00: Session 2 talks  - Promotiezaal
• 17:00 - 19:00: Reception & Poster session - Patio​
  

• 9:30 - 10:30: Session 3 talks -  Promotiezaal​
  
• 10:45 - 11:15: Coffee break - Patio
• 11:15 - 12:30: Session 4 talks -  Promotiezaal​
• 12:30 - 13:30: Lunch break - Patio
  
• 13:30 - 14:15: Invited talk 2 - Promotiezaal​
• 14:15 - 15:00: Session 5 talks - Promotiezaal​
  
• 15:00 - 15:30: Coffee break - Patio
• 15:30 - 17:00: Session 6 talks  - Promotiezaal
• 19:00 - 23:00: Conference Dinner -TBA
  

• 10:00 - 10:45: Invited talk 3 - Promotiezaal
• 10:45 - 11:15: Coffee break - Patio
• 11:15 - 12:30: Session 7 talks - Promotiezaal
• 12:30 - 13:30: Lunch break - Patio​
• 13:30 - 15:00: Session 8 talks - Promotiezaal​
• 15:00 - 15:30: Coffee break - Patio​
• 15:30 - 17:00:  Session 9 talks - Promotiezaal

Aquatic Ecology & Evolution Division, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern.

Webpage

Building blocks of cichlid adaptive radiation 

Cichlid fishes dispersed across tropical environments are a striking illustration of how lineages can diversify in an evolutionary blink of an eye when conditions are right—although there are many instances where they have failed to do so. Here, I synthesise my work of the last decade towards understanding the key building blocks that enabled cichlids to colonise new environments and undergo adaptive radiation into hundreds of ecologically distinct species that co-exist in sympatric communities. I integrate multidimensional data to discuss how facets such as gene regulation, ancestral hybridization, spatial dispersal patterns, and genetic and phenotypic modularity – may have interacted with ecological opportunity to contribute to the evolutionary "superpowers" of cichlids. 

Behavioural Evolution Lab. Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour 

Webpage

Behavioural evolution in an adaptive radiation: diversity arises through reorganisation of conserved behavioural, cognitive, and neural elements

The evolution of behaviour is often framed as a problem of innovation, yet across biological levels, from genes to neural circuits, diversity more commonly arises through the modification and recombination of conserved elements. Behaviour has remained the exception, largely because we have lacked a framework for identifying comparable units across species. Here I argue that the adaptive radiation of Tanganyikan cichlid fishes provides a system in which this problem can be resolved, allowing us to study behavioural evolution as modular redeployment rather than invention. 

Using computational analyses of social interactions, we construct shared behavioural morphospaces in which closely related species express the same underlying behavioural states yet occupy distinct regions, demonstrating that divergence arises from changes in sequencing, weighting, and context-dependent deployment rather than the origin of new behaviours. In construction behaviour, a similar pattern is observed - species produce distinct nest architectures using a common set of motor actions, showing how reorganisation of shared elements generates different functional outcomes. In cognition, comparative field experiments reveal that species with equivalent sensory systems and baseline preferences diverge under increased perceptual load through differences in attentional allocation, indicating that evolution acts on decision rules rather than underlying mechanisms. Finally, using controlled avatar-based stimuli presented to wild animals, we link behavioural responses to neural activation patterns, demonstrating that distinct social decisions can be elicited by identical kinematic inputs, providing a direct bridge between behavioural deployment and brain activity. 

Together, these results support a unifying framework in which behavioural evolution proceeds through the modular redeployment of conserved elements across levels, from motor actions to behavioural sequences, cognitive strategies, and their neural substrates. By integrating field-standardised experiments, computational ethology, and neurobiological approaches, this system allows us to move toward a general theory of behavioural evolution in which novelty arises not from new components, but from new configurations of a shared repertoire of behavioural, cognitive, and neural elements. 

Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University 

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The evolution of social behaviors in nature and under domestication 

​What mechanisms underlie the vast diversity of social behaviors we observe in nature? I will present how we leverage extreme variation in social behaviors between populations of a species and between closely-related species of vertebrates to discover the genetic, neuronal, and endocrine bases of this variation. This work has identified unifying principles and a few surprises about the evolution of social behavior.