In February we started a hopefully long-lived tradition of exploring mountainous areas with Tanja Schwander’s group (they do very cool stuff in Lausanne). We exchanged a lot of protocols (e.g. versatile uses of mushrooms, spinach etc.) and proceeded to build a giant snow invertebrate of somewhat uncertain taxonomic identity.
At this years Swiss Conference on Ecology, Evolution, Systematics, Biogeography and Conservation kokkonut Nina Gerber was the lucky winner of the best student talk award in the category Evolution.
Congratulations Nina!
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Size the day! Especially in autumn, when you can find some rare, but amazingly colourful sunny days. That’s what we told ourselves and planned this recent group hike.
Well, sun? No. Colours? Yes! And a warm and welcoming Solothurn with all it’s (eleven?) wonders. We didn’t drink an “öufi” (swiss german for eleven), the famous beer of Solothurn, but fortunately the cake made up for it.
To see the whole adventure of our group hike to the Pilatus have a look at the gallery…
Our recent guest we could welcome at kokkonuts was Heidi Colleran. Heidi is working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse and is interested in interactions between demography and culture, with a special focus on reproductive decision-making during the process of demographic transition. We hope you had a successful time in Zurich and you can proceed with new ideas for modelling!
On a regular basis the orange pony is given the opportunity to observe a group of enthusiasts in cooking, and, of course, enjoying the gourmet menus they produce. They call themselves the “Good Food Society” (GFS) – and the pictures can only verify this title, I would say.
Last time’s topic was Istanbul. Have a look yourself and decide what would have been your favourit bites – the sweet Baklava with pistachios, the spicy filled peppers or maybe the really very pink bulgur salad? Enjoy!
We are very happy to host our next visitor; Xiang-Yi Li stepped by from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön where she is doing her PhD in the Department of Evolutionary Theory. We had a very fun time with Xiang-Yi, and, who knows, maybe her next habitat will be in the Kokkonuts group?
We are glad to host another interested and interesting visitor these days! Nick Davies is a doctoral student at the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford, where he works on coevolution between transposons and their hosts, and on the origin of helping in arthropods. His visit to the kokkonuts has been about meeting this fabulous group (his words – thank you! 🙂 ) and discussing thoughts about bet-hedging and cooperation.
We hope you enjoyed your time here in Zurich and wish you a good flight back!
