We want to share the great news that Matt Wersebe is the recipient of the 2022 Rosemary Knapp Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Research.
This award, with $500 prize, is for the best published paper by a current Biology graduate student in the previous year.
For the publication – Wersebe, M.J., R.E. Sherman, P.D. Jeyasingh, and L.J. Weider. 2022. The role of recombination and selection in shaping genomic divergence in an incipient ecological species complex. Molecular Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16383. This publication represents Chapter 2 of Matt’s doctoral dissertation, and it provides the first sex-specific estimates of recombination rates for a cyclical parthenogen. However, unlike other eukaryotic species, the authors observed male-biased heterochiasmy in Daphnia pulicaria, which may be related to this somewhat unique breeding mode. It also represents one of the first phased genome assemblies for a non-model invertebrate species. CONGRATULATIONS MATT!