Ecology and Evolution of Livebearing fishes: Schlupp lab

A lot is happening right now. As the spring semester unfolds (Spring Break is almost over), we are preparing for the summer (and for tornado season….).

We had a new paper come out recently. It is one of very few papers on Limia vitiate, the endemic Limia from Cuba. Many individuals are spotted, but not all. what is behind that? Natural selection or sexual selection. Find out here: RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, R., SPIKES, M., ITURRIAGA MONSISBAY, M. & SCHLUPP, I. (2023) Color polymorphism in the Cuban endemic livebearing fish Limia vittata (Teloestei, Poeciliidae): Potential roles of sexual and natural selection Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1002/ece3.9768). Several papers are submitted, maybe coming out soon.

Then there was a delightful visit by Kathy Kasic, who gave a wonderful talk and screened her awesome movie: The lake at the bottom of the world. Breathtaking visuals and fantastic story! There is a huge freshwater lake under the Antarctic ice.

Just before that visit I spent a short weekend in New York. Exploring the MET and walking Manhattan. At the MET I found a beautiful vase with a Peacock theme. Darwin would have been delighted.

And of course, waving at Lady Liberty on the way to Staten Island.

Finally, I was interviewed for the Fish of Week podcast by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I got to talk about the Amazon Molly for a little while and had nothing but fun! Here is a link to the podcast, check it out.

Summer and Fall of 2022 were difficult for me for personal reasons. Although I tried to let my professional work not be affected too much, it was not possible. It turned out to be a bit of a slow year in terms of publications, too. And I only submitted one major grant. But there are several things in the pipeline! A cool review of the effects of asexuals on sexual species is re-submitted to Evolution (and the preprint is available, too). Several papers from the NSF funded Amazon Molly project are also submitted and will hopefully come out in 2023.

We are also revisiting an old dataset on genetic structuring in Sailfin mollies, which will be my first paper with son, Dr. Jan Schlupp.

And I plan to submit at least three grant proposals in 2023……

In the summer, I attended my first in person conference in a long time – and promptly got Covid. Luckily, I had mild symptoms, but the disruption was serious, nonetheless.

Undeterred, I agreed to be an opponent for a doctoral student at Stockholm University. It was both terrifying and fun for the candidate and me. It felt like a huge responsibility to me. But it all worked out! Right after that I was able to attend a small conference in Wageningen, Netherlands, on Poeciliid Biology. It was a most delightful meeting with a lot to be learnt and many cool talks and discussions. I really love these small conferences!

One of the highlights in the fall was a short trip to Puerto Rico to check out the invasive livebearers of this island. There are no native Poeciliids on the island, but plenty of invasive species, including – of course – Guppies. And not only invasive fishes, but also invasive Green Iguanas. They are very pretty, but have a huge ecological impact.

It feels a little surreal with the war against Ukraine, the Covid pandemic, now monkey pox, global warming and everything, but it is summer! Time for conferences, research, travel……. I did a short trip to Austin, Texas to deliver some fishes from the stockcenter for a collaboration.

Check out the small symposium we are going to have in June in Puebla, Mexico on Amazon mollies. More info under the upcoming events tab!

Finally, I was able to create a list of books on Mate Choice I like for Shepard. Check it out here: https://shepherd.com/best-books/mate-choice-in-animals.

The books I list are from colleagues and friends I respect very much. Take a look!

Sometimes events just take over. This has happened too often lately. First a pandemic with millions of deaths, now a war of aggression against Ukraine that is shaking up the world as we knew it. Herr Putin is the clear villain in this and he must be stopped. I stand with Ukraine and how they bravely defend all of us.

Although it is sometimes difficult to grasp, life still happens. I teach Animal Behavior and we just had a long discussion of sexual selection. The students liked that peacocks made Darwin sick!

In other news, our investigation into the origin of Amazon mollies is moving along nicely! We will share first results at a small symposium to be held in Puebla, Mexico in May. It will be nice to be back in Mexico and to share ideas with colleagues.

January is always a funny month. After the winter holidays, the semester begins and everything seems out of balance for a few weeks. I am teaching again, this time Animal Behavior, a course I love to teach. We teach in person with masks (my students are great at wearing them), so I only see the top half of their faces, but it all works out so far.

Research is very active, several papers are (re) submitted, more to come! Interestingly, a few older studies from our work on Cave mollies have now matured and are ready to come out.

New students are joining the lab, all is very dynamic.

And last week we had our annual snowstorm. Campus was closed for three days, driving was difficult, but nothing seriously bad happened. Yeah!

Luckily, winter does not last long here in Oklahoma and soon the sunflowers will dominate again.

It is time to greet 2022 with hopes for a year less dominated by the pandemic and the right wing activists that are now teaming up with people opposing vaccinations. As I scientist I have a very hard time understanding why people reject the protection provided by a vaccine. It seems utterly irrational to me – and that may be the most disturbing part. There are so many wrinkles to this…..

How did the pandemic affect me so far? Every aspect of life is more difficult, doing science and teaching are much more exhausting, field work and travel are near impossible. Nonetheless, personally I had many good moments this year, working with great people, enjoying family and friends as much as possible. For that I am very, very grateful. One thing the virus has highlighted for me is to enjoy the moment. Say goodby to the idea that we control all aspects of our lives…..

After the semester was over, I flew to Germany for a family visit with a short detour to give two talks in Italy. This was so much fun! Thanks to my hosts and all the good people that took time to hang out with me.

This time of the year is exceptionally hectic, with many things going on. NSF proposals, teaching, writing papers, running experiments, analyzing data…. All of this is great fun, but it can be overwhelming. Luckily, Thanksgiving is coming up and with it an opportunity to take a deep breath.

And while everybody is busy, Covid is launching the next wave. Here in Oklahoma, practically nobody out side of the university is wearing a mask; a decision that some will pay for dearly.

As the year winds down, I was thinking about publications and in 2021 we did well, despite the pandemic. See the list below! And the year is not quite over yet ;).

1. RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, R., JOSAPHAT, J., TORRES PINEDA, P.* & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Annotated list of livebearing fishes (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae) from Lake Miragoane in southwestern Haiti. Novitates Caribaea (17) 147-162.
2. SPIKES, M. & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Males can’t afford to be choosy: male reproductive investment does not influence preference for female size in Limia (Poeciliidae). Behavioural Processes (183). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2021.104315
3. RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, R. & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Biogeography of the West Indies: a complex scenario for species radiations in terrestrial and aquatic habitats. Ecology and Evolution.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.7236
4. RIESCH, R., MAKOWICZ, A., JOACHIM, B., GARCÍA-DE LEÓN, F.J. & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Life history of the Tamesí molly, Poecilia latipunctata, from two populations in the Río Tamesí drainage in northeastern México. Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad, 92, e923107.
5. RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, R. & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Testing Janzen’s mountain passes theory through analyses of thermal breadth in livebearing fishes of the genus Limia (Teleostei, Poeciliidae) in the Antilles. Novitates Caribeae, (18), 46 – 62.
6. SPIKES, M., HUEBLER, S*. & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Male secondary sexual traits do not predict female preference in Caribbean livebearing fishes (Limia). Ethology, (127) 675–681.
7. SMITH, S. N., SCHLUPP, I., HIGGINS, E. D., WATTERS, J. L., BENNETT, K.-A., BRÄGER, S. & SILER, C. D. (2021) Development and validation of an environmental DNA assay for an invasive freshwater fish, the guppy (Poecilia reticulata). Environmental DNA, 00, 1-7.
8. RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, R., SPIKES, M. ITURRIAGA, M., BENNETT, K.-A., JOSAPHAT, J., TORRES PINEDA, P., BRÄGER, S. & SCHLUPP, I. (2021) Feeding strategies and diet variation in livebearing fishes of the genus Limia (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae) in the Greater Antilles. Ecology of Freshwater Fish, 00, 1-12.

Yeah! Back to school! The COVID pandemic is still hounding us, but my university has no mask or vaccination mandate: this has been banned by the Governor. IS this troubling? You decide.

There are a few updates: we have a new paper out in the nice journal eDNA. It took a really long time, but now it is out. The paper reports the first resource to detect guppies (Poecilia reticulata) based on environmental DNA extracted from water samples. Check out the paper, it is open access! It also shows a very nice collaboration with colleagues from all over the Caribbean and the world.

Tyler Reich, Debbie Cunningham, and I have launched a new experiment looking for effects of enrichment in Amazon mollies. We’ll report results in a year!

And we had a really nice lab outing to a Baseball game in Oklahoma City. Tyler and Kayla spent a lot of time explaining the game to all the foreigners…… Later I heard that Kevin Costner was at the same game. I would have bought him a beer, if only he had told me.

As the weather and climate are causing disasters all over the world, we had a relatively quite time in Oklahoma. No tornadoes, not much flooding; it was even relatively cool until a few days ago. But right now it is hot with temps creeping up to well over 90 F.

We did a short field trip to South Texas, which was a lot of fun. My book has now been out for a few weeks – but only in Europe. OUP has not been able yet to ship it to the US (the book is printed in the UK). So, sadly, I advertise or the book, but interested people can only pre-order! I am now waiting for first comments and reviews. Thanks to a visitor from Germany, I did get my hands on a first copy and the book is very nice (I may be a little bit biased, though).

In other news: one more paper from Rodet’s PhD thesis just came out: a nice comparison of thermal tolerance in Limia.

More papers are on the way!

So much has happened since I last wrote, but the most important things are that both Trai and Rodet have finished their PhD’s and successfully defended their theses. This is a major change for the lab and I could not be happier and prouder.

Trai has published another paper from his thesis in Ethology. Two more are missing and will be resubmitted soon. Rodet and I are also working on a few studies that will be resubmitted very soon.

Rodet will stay in Norman for a while, but Trai took a position working in Sacramento. I will miss having them in the lab!

In other news, we have a REU student, Caden Smith, who is helping with the NSF project. he is looking at mate choice in the two ancestral species.

And finally my book is now officially out and available in Europe. The US is a month behind, but even here the book will be available in a few days! Send comments, please.