Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology logo.

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

It’s late November, which means a few things: Winter is coming, Westworld is wrapping up, people are going to lose their minds on Black Friday, and, most importantly, the annual meeting for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) is upon us. SICB is one the biggest annual meetings for biologists in the United States, and it is a venue where Anolis research is prominently featured. This year’s meeting, which will be held in New Orleans during the first week of January, is no exception. By my count there are 35 talks and posters featuring anoles. I’ve been attending this meeting regularly for nearly a decade and I’m fairly certain this is a new record. I think that this particularly high turnout really speaks to the increasing prominence of anoles as model organisms for ecological and evolutionary studies.

With great prominence, however, comes great responsibility. We like to cover every presentation, whenever possible and also focus on giving spotlights to undergraduates and graduate students as much as possible. Every year we rely on many conference participants to blog about posters and talks. If you’re an undergraduate or graduate student, blogging is a great way to practice writing to a broader audience. Moreover, if you blog for AA and are presenting at SICB, we guarantee that we will cover your presentation. Bloggers at all levels of experience are welcome to blog – undergrads, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty! Please email me at mmm109@duke.edu or leave a comment for this post if you’re interested in blogging for AA at SICB and we’ll get you started. I will provide detailed information on how to blog and will also be at the conference (and blogging for AA) and can provide assistance. See this post from SICB 2016 for an example. Thanks very much!