The Society of Systematic Biologists advances the science of systematic biology in all its aspects of theory, principles, methodology, and practice, for both living and fossil organisms, with emphasis on areas of common interest to all systematic biologists regardless of individual specialization.
Recent News
Mini-ARTS award applications now open!
Description
These awards are for revisionary taxonomy and systematics, modeled after the NSF program Advancing Revisionary Taxonomy and Systematics (ARTS) developed within the Systematics and Biodiversity Science Cluster. We call these 'Mini-ARTS' grants.
Requirements
These awards are designed to allow SSB members (students, post-docs, and faculty) to spend a summer or semester apprenticed to an expert in a particular taxonomic group or to enhance revisionary taxonomic and systematics research in novel ways. Goals of this award program are to address constraints on our knowledge of undescribed biodiversity, assist in passing on taxonomic expertise before it is lost, increase the number of students with broad training in organismal biology and systematics, and support projects in biodiversity and taxonomy informatics as well as monographic and revisionary taxonomy. Activities can include a trip to the taxonomist's laboratory, pay for the taxonomist to visit the applicant's laboratory for a period of time, or pay for costs of computer time or development of interactive keys for electronic dissemination of systematics results. Requests for support may be for any amount up to USD 4,000. The rubric with which these submissions will be judged is posted on the application website. You must join the Society or renew your membership before submitting your application.
The deadline to apply is July 1st, 2023.
These awards are for revisionary taxonomy and systematics, modeled after the NSF program Advancing Revisionary Taxonomy and Systematics (ARTS) developed within the Systematics and Biodiversity Science Cluster. We call these 'Mini-ARTS' grants.
Requirements
These awards are designed to allow SSB members (students, post-docs, and faculty) to spend a summer or semester apprenticed to an expert in a particular taxonomic group or to enhance revisionary taxonomic and systematics research in novel ways. Goals of this award program are to address constraints on our knowledge of undescribed biodiversity, assist in passing on taxonomic expertise before it is lost, increase the number of students with broad training in organismal biology and systematics, and support projects in biodiversity and taxonomy informatics as well as monographic and revisionary taxonomy. Activities can include a trip to the taxonomist's laboratory, pay for the taxonomist to visit the applicant's laboratory for a period of time, or pay for costs of computer time or development of interactive keys for electronic dissemination of systematics results. Requests for support may be for any amount up to USD 4,000. The rubric with which these submissions will be judged is posted on the application website. You must join the Society or renew your membership before submitting your application.
The deadline to apply is July 1st, 2023.
The Evolution conference is the joint annual meeting of the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists. The meeting is one of the premiere opportunities for sharing research on evolutionary biology each year.
Registration is now open! Register by May 1st to receive the discounted early registration rate.
Evolution 2023 will be held in 2 parts: A 2-day virtual conference with live online talks, symposia, and networking events held June 2-3, followed by a 5-day in-person conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Albuquerque Convention Center on June 21-25, 2023. Register for the virtual conference, in-person conference, or both!
SSB is sponsoring a wide variety of events at the meeting, including:
Follow @evol_mtg or @evol_mtg@ecoevo.social for updates.
Registration is now open! Register by May 1st to receive the discounted early registration rate.
Evolution 2023 will be held in 2 parts: A 2-day virtual conference with live online talks, symposia, and networking events held June 2-3, followed by a 5-day in-person conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Albuquerque Convention Center on June 21-25, 2023. Register for the virtual conference, in-person conference, or both!
SSB is sponsoring a wide variety of events at the meeting, including:
- Ernst Mayr Award Symposium
- Two Themed Symposia:
- "Paving the road to the phenome: challenges in working with a large number of phenotypes"
- "Modern biogeographic approaches for integrating complex data across time and space"
- "Paving the road to the phenome: challenges in working with a large number of phenotypes"
- SSB Presidential Address
- SSB Member's Business Meeting
- Evening Socials
- Night at the Museum
- Super Social
- Night at the Museum
- Networking lunches (LGBTQ+, postdocs, faculty-student)
- Themed Coffee Socials
- Flying Solo
- Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI)
- Latines in Evolution
- John Edmonstone
- Evolutionary Biologists with Disabilities
- Flying Solo
Follow @evol_mtg or @evol_mtg@ecoevo.social for updates.
SSB Announces New Mentorship Program
|
SSB is excited to announce a new mentorship program! This program will help create mentorship pairs between junior and senior members of the systematics community. Junior members will receive guidance (e.g., scientific, professional, etc.) from senior members located at different institutions, while senior members will nurture growth in the next generation of systematists. The program will pair graduate students and postdocs (junior members) with more-established members of the systematics community, including faculty, curators, teachers, researchers, etc. (senior members).
The initial cohort will consist of 20 mentoring pairs, and matches between mentees and mentors will be created based on shared interests. The expected duration of these mentoring pairs is one year. Mentors and mentees should meet for one hour per month over video chat (e.g. Zoom). Mentorship might also involve occasional email correspondence for advice and/or friendly peer review. |
Enrollment is open to all members of the systematics and phylogenetics community that will meet the program's expectations of participants (described below). Enrollment will remain open until May 7th, 2023. We will aim to announce mentoring pairs by May 15th, 2023.
Enrollment Link: https://forms.gle/mc2gPDwaTGYvcR1k7
Program Overview & Expectations: https://www.systbio.org/mentoring-program.html
For more information, email mentorship@systematicbiologists.org.
Enrollment Link: https://forms.gle/mc2gPDwaTGYvcR1k7
Program Overview & Expectations: https://www.systbio.org/mentoring-program.html
For more information, email mentorship@systematicbiologists.org.
Call for Reviewers - SSB Student Awards
SSB is always looking for reviewers for student awards competitions!
These awards include Graduate Student Research Awards, Mini-ARTS awards, and the Ernst Mayr Award. Serving as a reviewer for these award competitions is a critical role in our Society and directly supports early career researchers in systematics.
Please indicate your interest by filling out this form.
These awards include Graduate Student Research Awards, Mini-ARTS awards, and the Ernst Mayr Award. Serving as a reviewer for these award competitions is a critical role in our Society and directly supports early career researchers in systematics.
Please indicate your interest by filling out this form.
Thank you to the organizers of #SSB2023!
|
The fifth SSB standalone meeting was held on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in México City, México on Jan. 14th and 15th, 2023.
#SSB2023 is now over - and what a fantastic meeting it was! Wonderful people, exciting science, and a great location. A huge thank you to all the organizers: Susana Magallón, Santiago Ramírez, Hernán Vázquez, Ricardo García, Alejandro González, Ivalú Cacho, Virginia León, Alejandro Oceguera, Helga Ochoterena, Alejandro Zaldivar, Alejandra Moreno, Arturo Becerra, Pablo Vinuesa SSB is so grateful for all your hard work! |
Proposed Code of Ethics
|
Since 2018, there has been a tri-society initiative to develop a Code of Ethics for the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. While behavior at the annual Evolution meeting falls under a Code of Conduct, the societies currently have no policies regarding conduct outside the meeting. Adopting Codes of Ethics will allow the societies to establish explicit standards of excellence and a transparent process for upholding these standards, and in so doing, foster societies that are welcoming for everyone. The three societies have now each drafted their own Codes of Ethics. Before each Code is put into place, we are seeking our members’ feedback and approval.
We invite you to visit the Code of Ethics website, review the standards of conduct and processes for enforcement, ask any questions you may have, and give your feedback. |
|
SSB Legacy Committee
The new SSB Legacy Committee is working to create accessible content about our society's history. The founding members are Chris Simon, Michael Landis, Jim Rohlf, Gary Schnell, and Rosana Zenil-Ferguson. Go here for more information, and expect more soon.
Announcing The Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists
We are pleased to announce that the Society of Systematic Biologists launched a new journal on May 1st, 2021. The Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists (BSSB) will be published in collaboration with the Library Publishing Coalition at The Ohio State University Libraries. This innovative partnership will enable us to publish open access articles at a minimal cost to members of the Society of Systematic Biologists. Articles will be published without article processing charges (APCs) for SSB members. Stay tuned for the first issue of the Bulletin!
The Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists will publish manuscripts that advance our understanding of the Earth's biodiversity, with a special focus on investigations that describe how species are related (i.e., phylogeny), identified (e.g., species delimitation, morphometrics, taxonomic practice), or have evolved (e.g., phylogeography, biogeography, phylogenetic comparative methods). BSSB will also publish manuscripts that advance the theory or methods used in data analysis. Manuscripts will be evaluated on two criteria: the quality of the science and their contribution to our collective understanding of the focal species or clade. BSSB aims to publish investigations that utilize state of the art data analyses and high-quality data sets to achieve these goals.
Code of Conduct
We have a code of conduct at all our meetings; we encourage reporting of issues to members of the joint meeting council or members of our executive committee. All three societies are dedicated to making the meeting a welcoming place to all with no discrimination or harassment. To this end, we have created a form to aggregate the useful suggestions that have come in so far. To provide a suggestion, go here. To see the suggestions so far, please go here (SSB does not vet or approve of these suggestions -- we're merely aggregating them now for future discussion). Note that the form has been populated with public suggestions proposed on Twitter and Facebook so far (though the comments were made associated with names, it's not clear that people want their name associated, so only the first initial is included -- if you want your name included, please contact Brian O'Meara). We'll be doing more moving forward -- this is just a rapid response to capture ideas while they're fresh