Italy

Men and women differ in many ways, but the magnitudes of these sex differences vary between populations and epochs, adding to the contentious nature of this topic. However, our framework based on evolutionary theory provides an explanation for fluctuations in sex differences and predicts that (1) variation in mean sex differences and (2) the amount of variation within each sex, will correlate with general health. We are exploring these hypotheses for a diversity of human traits including morphological, physiological and cognitive characteristics, and will present all our findings to date at the conference. The patterns arising so far suggest that traits exaggerated in one sex can be excellent biomarkers of health, making them a canary in the coalmine signalling deteriorating, or improving, societal conditions.

SEB Conference 2026

The sexy and frail human body: how sexually selected traits differ within and between men and women is dependent on environmental conditions

sexual selection

stressors

morphology

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

SEB’s Annual Conference is celebrated for creating the perfect composition of research, new discoveries, and collaborative connections. Be creative and innovative by exchanging ideas and knowledge with masters of biology from all over the world.

**This year’s theme was “Resilience.”**

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Each year at our Annual Conference, we honour George Parker Bidder and Harold Woolhouse with two key Plenary Lectures. These lectures, along with the Cell Biology and OED Plenary Lecture, are given by scientists prominent in their field and are nominated by the committees of their respective sections.<br>

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SEB’s Annual Conference is celebrated for creating the perfect composition of research, new discoveries and collaborative connections. Be creative and innovative by exchanging ideas and knowledge with masters of biology from all over the world. 

High-throughput phenotyping has substantially advanced the understanding of shoot-level stress responses; however, progress in root phenotyping remains limited. Traditional root studies are destructive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for dynamic monitoring. Here, we present applications of the PlantScreen™ Root System, an automated, non-invasive platform enabling parallel monitoring of root and shoot growth across multiple plant species. The system allows precise control of rhizobox soil moisture, facilitating either waterlogging or drought treatments, and supports the application of defined nutrient and biostimulant regimes. Within the framework of the BarleyMicroBreed project, root growth dynamics of ten barley genotypes were characterized at early developmental stages under optimized moderate drought conditions. Simultaneous analysis of root and shoot growth complements field-trial evaluations aimed at assessing the contribution of root traits to plant performance, particularly yield stability under drought. Morphological traits of shoots and roots were captured using RGB imaging, while multispectral and near-infrared sensors provided additional insights into physiological properties, including root water content. Automated image segmentation using a sensor-specific pipeline with a pretrained model, followed by trait extraction, enabled efficient quantitative trait analysis. The results revealed distinct, genotype-dependent responses to drought, reflecting diverse stress-resilience mechanisms. Importantly, our findings demonstrate that high-throughput phenotyping at early seedling stages can capture divergent root dynamic strategies that may be predictive of later field performance under drought conditions. Overall, the integration of above- and below-ground phenotypic data with advanced analytical approaches extends trait assessment beyond traditional methods, providing deeper insights into root-shoot regulation under stress and supporting trait selection for crop improvement.

Root-to-Shoot Stress Response Dynamics: A Case Study of Barley Drought Resilience

Agility places substantial biomechanical demands on dogs and increases the risk of injuries, particularly in the forelimbs where high forces occur during jump landings. However, limited research exists on how different agility jumps affect forelimb loading. This study aimed to quantify forelimb kinetics during landing for three common agility jumps. Six agility dogs of varied breeds completed three 60cm jumps— straight hurdle, wrap, and threadle — in a randomised order. All dogs were classified as large. Landing kinetics were recorded with a Tekscan pressure walkway for three successful trials per jump. Repeated-measures ANOVA was used for normally distributed variables, and Friedman’s test for non??'normal data. The leading forelimb experienced significantly higher peak vertical forces (PVF) during the straight jump compared to wrap (+228.13N, p=0.012) and threadle (+214.48N, p=0.014). The trailing forelimb PVF were higher during a straight jump compared to wrap (+92.55N, p=0.023). The PVF symmetry index was significantly different between the straight jump, when the forelimbs experienced symmetrical loading, and the jumps with turns, when the trailing forelimb experienced higher PVF (p<0.027). Force-time impulse was greater in the trailing forelimb during the threadle compared to the straight jump (p=0.003). Overall, agility jump type significantly influences forelimb loading patterns. Straight jumps generate higher forces with symmetrical limb loading, while jumps with turns generate lower forces but with asymmetrical limb loading. These findings should be considered during canine training and agility course design to mitigate the risk of injuries.

Forelimb kinetics in agility dogs during landing phase of straight, wrap and threadle jumps

The small body size of insects makes their body temperature particularly sensitive to the environmental conditions around them. Through conductive and convective heat transfer, insects can use behavioural thermoregulation – actively exploiting different thermal microclimates – to direct their body temperature towards optima of thermally sensitive physiological processes (e.g., muscle contraction, digestion, sensory perception). Yet, little is known about how this thermal preference of insects varies within a community, and how these preferences might change at larger geographical scales under different climatic conditions. In this study, we measured the thermal preference of 52 insect taxa at four sites encompassing a wide latitudinal range in Europe (Madrid, Spain; Lyon, France; Trondheim, Central Norway; Svanvik, Northern Norway) to better understand what drives variation in this important thermal metric. The field caught insects were acclimated for 24 hrs at 20°C after which they were placed in individual lanes of a custom-built linear temperature gradient that allowed them to behaviourally select a preferred temperature. The activity and position of individuals on the gradient were filmed and evaluated with video-analysis software to identify their thermal preference. We found that variation among species and individuals of a species was greater than the variation present between sites/populations within a species. We furthermore investigate how thermal preference relates to other metrics like the upper limits of thermal tolerance and discuss how these data can be used to inform modelling attempts predicting insects’ behaviour and persistence under future climate change.

Thermal preference of insects diverges more within and across species than latitude

Gleaning bats are expert listeners and use both active echolocation and passive listening to prey cues to achieve extremely high hunting success. Previous studies have shown that they succeed at catching prey using either information channel exclusively; however, the relative importance of each channel remains to be understood. To address this, we therefore hypothesised that lower quantity or quality of information in either channel would trigger echolocation adjustments and / or coping flight maneuvers, to maintain foraging efficiency in the face of sensory deprivation. In a laboratory experiment using the frog-eating batTrachops cirrhosusas model species, we masked either information channel with noise of different frequencies, and manipulated the number of frog calls the bats could use to guide their attacks. We find that bats developed individual strategies to attack the frog. Impaired sensory information decreased the bats’ motivation to initiate attacks and their catching success; however, the bats did not adjust motor patterns during attacks, nor modified echolocation calls beyond predictions from the Lombard effect. We found that they slightly delayed the attacks to inspect the frog and used 5-25 more echolocation calls in impaired sensory conditions (e.g., 15-60% in addition to the numbers). These results demonstrate that integrating information from both passive listening and echolocation enables gleaning bats to perform more efficient capture attempts and contribute to explaining how gleaning bats achieve such high foraging success rates in the wild.

How to catch a frog: sensory deprivation shows that gleaning bats need echolocation for successful prey capture

Modern agriculture faces a difficult balancing act: maintaining high yields for a growing population while drastically reducing the environmental harm caused by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. While nitrogen-fixing bacteria, or diazotrophs, offer a promising biological alternative, their performance in the field remains frustratingly inconsistent. Our research aims to bridge this gap by looking beyond microbes in isolation and focusing instead on the complex microbial and chemical networks that dictate their success. By moving away from traditional single-strain studies, we utilize advanced experimental systems of increasing complexity to dissect how these bacteria integrate into the wheat rhizosphere. We combine high-resolution chemical profiling with cutting-edge statistical modeling to map the invisible interactions between the plant, the soil, and the microbial community. This integrative approach allows us to move past "trial and error" inoculation and instead work toward a definitive roadmap for harnessing beneficial microbes. Our progress in developing this framework and our initial steps toward designing stable, resilient microbial communities for a more sustainable and resilient future for wheat production is presented in a poster.

The Colonization Roadmap: A Systems Approach to Diazotroph Integration in Wheat

Plants host complex microbial communities, collectively known as the plant microbiome, which play a central role in plant health and productivity. Microbiome composition is shaped by plant genotype, soil physicochemical properties, microbial interactions, and environmental stressors. Through the secretion of diverse root exudates, plants actively modulate microbial recruitment, enhancing adaptation to fluctuating environments and facilitating the acquisition of essential nutrients such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). However, crop domestication and modern breeding have unintentionally reduced the capacity of cultivated wheat to establish beneficial associations with soil microbes, potentially limiting nutrient acquisition efficiency. To investigate this, we analyse the functional potential of the ancestral wheat microbiome with a specific focus on bacterial genes and metabolic pathways related to N acquisition and P solubilisation. We are constructing a genomically characterized culture collection of wheat-associated bacterial isolates and performing whole-genome sequencing followed by comprehensive functional annotation. Comparative genomic analyses will identify key taxa, metabolic traits, and nutrient-mobilising pathways enriched in ancestral wheat–associated bacteria under nutrient-depleted conditions. This genome-based approach enables the systematic dissection of domestication-driven shifts in microbial functional capacity and the identification of candidate bacterial traits associated with improved nutrient mobilisation. By exploring bacterial functional genomics, this work establishes a mechanistic framework to uncover microbial traits that can inform sustainable nutrient management and enhance climate resilience in modern wheat production systems.

From Culture Collection to Function: Recovering Beneficial Microbial Traits Lost During Wheat Domestication

Root endophytes are microbial species which harmlessly colonise plant roots. Many endophytes have beneficial functions for the plant host. Rhizobia can form symbiotic associations with legumes, providing them with all the nitrogen that they require, while other species are known to solubilise nutrients or prevent disease. Harnessing the benefits of symbiotic endophytes would enable us to grow food with reduced fertiliser input and fewer crops lost to pathogens.
However, attempts to study plant-endophyte relationships have been hampered by the difficulty of studying endophyte species. Many species do not grow in culture and 16S sequencing only allows us to estimate the functions of the endophytes as it does not go to the species level in most cases.
We have developed a method which depletes plant DNA from homogenised root samples, allowing high molecular weight microbial DNA to be extracted and sequenced using long-read sequencing. This allows us not just to identify the species present in the endosphere, but also to assemble the complete genomes of the endophytes and analyse their functional genes. Functional analysis will determine the presence of beneficial genes such as nitrogenases, help understand the relationship between the plant and its endophytes, and may identify species with plant growth-promoting properties whose activity can be pursued.

Next from SEB Conference 2026

Root-to-Shoot Stress Response Dynamics: A Case Study of Barley Drought Resilience

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