Latest happenings in the Gokhale Group

News!

2025-27-06 // Two new papers from our group!!: What a week! Collective cooperative intelligence” is a collaborative paper putting forth a perspective on the topic, while in a new PLoS Sustainability article, we measure the evolutionary, ecological and economic cost of fungicide resistance. Check out both papers here
2025-10-06 // Vandana is Research Faculty at MSU!!: Dr. Vandana Revathi Venkateswaran, our Alumnus, is now a research faculty member at Michigan State University! Many congratulations to her!!
2025-02-04 // Axel receives the BayLat grant!!: Axel has received a substantial grant from the Bavaria-Latin America Collaboration Fund to conduct research in Xalapa, Mexico and travel to and bring collaborators from there to work here at the CCTB. A fantastic achievement! Congratulations!!
2025-02-04 // Visit by Alejandra Maria Ramirez!!: It was fantastic to have Alejandra visit us from the MPI for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig (and MPI Plön), to discuss her amazing new work at the intersection of evolutionary games and behavioural economics.

2025-28-01 // Talk by Vasudha Kulkarni from ISTA!: Vasudha Kulkarni from ISTA, part of the Sylvia Cremer group, is here for two months and gave an awesome talk today in our group meeting about her exciting plans to connect social immunity in ants and multiplayer networks!
2025-27-01 // Studies are out!: 2025 has started with a bang for our group. Multiple publications are finally out in the world for peers to (constructively) critique and advance research, from macroecology to parasite ecology to evolutionary games with delays. Thanks to Axel, Gosia and, as always, our wonderful collaborators! A Happy New Year to all!
2024-12-02 // Gosia defends!: An amazing PhD defence by @Gosia at the University of Würzburg! Marie Curie Fellow Gosia did an exemplary job at highlighting the role of structure (spatial and temporal) in eco-evolutionary dynamics! All the best for the future, we know you will be fabulous!

2024-11-20 // Paper accepted!: A long-running collaboration with Dr. Linh Phuong Nguyen from the University of Fribourg has come to fruition. The paper by Phuong and Chaitanya has been accepted in Oikos!
2024-09-24 // Dana Defends!: Heartiest Congratulations to @Dana! She fabulously defended her thesis at the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty in Kiel with a summa cum laude! We are thrilled to celebrate her success! All the best for your future endeavours!!

2024-08-20 // Welcome Luis!: We are excited to have Luis Alejandro Villanueva Hernández, who joins us from KLI Vienna as a postdoc in the group. Luis will be focusing on using theoretical evolutionary development models from cultural evolution to analyse musical transmission processes! Welcome!!
2024-06-19 // Happy Anniversary Theory Department at the MPI!: The Unicorns were in Plön to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Theory Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. Such a great alumni meet-up.

2024-05-21 // Congratulations Dharanish!: in 2023 Dharanish interned in the group of Dr. Tobias Kaiser and worked on understanding the circasemilunar period in Clunio with the fantastic Dr. Jule Neumann! This resulted in a publication that is now out in The Journal of Biological Rhythms! Congratulations!!
2024-03-26 // Welcome to Axel!: Dr. Axel Arango joins our group as a postdoctoral fellow, bringing in his expertise in theoretical ecology! Welcome!!
2024-02-06 to 09 // @Dana and @Chaitanya at the International Conference “Dynamical Systems Applied to Biology and Natural Sciences – DSABNS”: Dana and Chaitanya organised a minisymposium on Theoretical models for sustainable agriculture!

2024-01-22 to 26 // Winter School in Szeged!: The EvoGamesPlus projects winter school took place in Szeged where Gosia and Chaitanya were present! Was amazing to see the progress of so many of the ESRs! A great start to 2024!
2023-11-20 // visiting Fribourg!!: After having Phuong visit ouur group in Wuerzburg it was time to visit her in Fribourg. Chaitanya gave a talk on Eco-evolutionary agriculture and stayed on for a week to discuss exciting new projects!!!
2023-11-10 // Vandana’s paper accepted in Ecology and Evolution: Vandana had visited the group of Sigrunn Eliassen in Norway during her PhD and started a research project. The study now is accepted in Ecology & Evolution! Congratulations!!
2023-10-09 // Phuong in Würzburg!!: This week we have Dr Phuong Nguyen visiting us from the University of Fribourg for a week to continue our ongoing collaboration! Welcome Phuong! Looking forward to all the sciencing!!!
2023-09-11 // Gosia @IMDEA Madrid!: As a part of her PhD @Gosia is on her final secondment in @IMDEA, Madrid working with @GuillermoSuarez-Tangil on deducing opinion and belief dynamics from real-world social networks! Have a fantastic time and don’t forget us!!!
2023-09-11 // Dana @ iDiv Leipzig!: For the next few weeks @Dana will be at iDiv to work with @HannaSchenk and @MartinQuaas on integrating more economic thinking in our eco-evolutionary agriculture theories! Have a lot of fun in Leipzig!!

2023-09-03 // Dana @ Dynamic Days!: Dana is presenting her work at the Dynamics Days conference in Naples, Italy!

2023-09-01 // Dharanish in Würzburg!: Dharanish has moved to Würzburg and will officially start his position soon!! Welcome!! :)
2023-08-30 // Javad Goodbye!: After 3 months of working on delays in multi-strategy games Javad has left us to go back to Warsaw! It was a pleasure having him around!!
2023-08-28 // Retreat 2023!: Another year another retreat! It was so great to brainstrom about our individuals projects and the future of theoretical biology in general with the fantastic group of Meike Wittmann! We met at Einschlingen this time!!

2023-08-14 // Dharanish in Bielefeld @Behaviour2023 !: Dharanish presents his thesis concept at the Behaviour 2023 meeting!!
2023-07-14 // Plön Unicorns appear in Würzburg !: Dana, Dharanish and Gosia visited Würzburg to meet the Institute and present their work! What a wonderful visit!!

2023-06-28 // Aquavit!: All group members presented posters/talks at the annual Aquavit event of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology! Thanks to the organisers for a fantastic event!
2023-06-01 // Javad visiting us for three months!: From the group of Jacek Miękisz from Warsaw, Javad Mohamadichamgavi is visiting our group for three months! Welcome and looking forward to great interactions!!
2023-03-13 // @Dharanish, @Gosia and @Dana go to MEM: All PhD students of T-Eco-Evo were at the 2nd Münster Evolution Meeting!!

2023-05-17 // Chaitanya’s work with Nikhil Sharma is now out in Open Science!: Nikhil Sharma did his internship in the group some time ago and it resulted in solidifying a fun concept into something tangible! Congratulations! Optimizing crop rotations via Parrondo’s paradox for sustainable agriculture
2023-02-15 // Gaurav’s paper is out as a preprint!: Amazing work by @Gaurav, and our very own former postdoc @Prateek Verma is out on bioRxiv! Congratulations! Antibiotic-mediated interactions underlying microbial diversity
2023-02-03 // Gosia’s paper out as a preprint!!!: Huge congratulaitons to Gosia for pushing her first preprint on the interwebs! Collective beliefs and trust in structured populations.
2023-01-20 // Paper out in mSystems!!!: Paper together with @MarianaVelasque and @JaiDenton now out in mSystems Ecological Drivers of Community Cohesion.
2023-01-17 // A Very Happy and Healty 2023!!!: From T-Eco-Evo we wish everyone a very happy and healthy 2023!!! @Dharanish kicked off the year’s group meeting with an excellent talk on the replicator dynamics of Clunio populations as they synchronise emergence times! Sets the bar very high right at the beginning of the year!
2022-11-26 // Dinner time!!!: We go for an early celebration for an end of the year event at @Chaitanya place with a traditional Raclette party!! Could not ask for better colleagues!!!
2022-11-21 // EvoGamesPlus winter School in Plön: @Gosia and @Chaitanya organised the winter school of the Marie Curie funded EvoGamesPlus project in Plön!
2022-09-19 // Workshop on Dynamic Games and Applications Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas: @ Chaitanya presented work on the ecology of beliefs at the workshop interacting across disciplines from psychology, mathematics, economics and advertising!
2022-09-19 // ‘T-Eco-Evo’ goes to ECMTB: All members of T-Eco-Evo were at the 12th European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology meeting in Heidelberg!!

2022-09-12 // @Nandakishor joins us from Hungary!: As a part of the EvoGamesPlus Marie Curie project, Nandakishor joins out group from Budapest, Hungary for a three month secondment! Welcome!!
2022-08-29 // Coffee lecture by @Gosia!!: What is a myth? how do stories impact our lives when they do not provide clear moral guidelines. What is the impact of stories in structured societies? @Gosia discusses this and more in an informal Coffee lecture. Photo by Iben Martinsen.

2022-08-15 // @Dana’s paper is released as a preprint!!: Huge congratulations to @DanaLauenroth for her first scientific publication released to the world. Find out more about a Theoretical assessment of persistence and adaptation in weeds with complex life cycles on bioRxiv.
2022-07-21 // @Chaitanya at ISDG Porto!: @Chaitanya presented some highly interdisciplinary work connecting statistical physics and sustainable agriculture pushed by @NikhilSharma
2022-07-21 // @Dana and @Gosia go to MMEE!: @Dana and @Gosia gave fantastic talks at the MMEE meeting in Reading! Congratulations on spreading the good word about your scientific prowess !!
2022-07-08 // Future of Game theory in biology!: It was an excellent week for game theory in biology, and the future is looking bright!
2022-06-15 // Gaurav starts in-person!: Gaurav has arrived from India to work on his Masters thesis on the origins of endosymbiosis!! So great ot have him here!
2022-06-13 // Austria!: @Chaitanya on a whirlwind tour in Austria visiting Graz and then Vienna talking about beliefs and cooperation. Here’s a picture of the serene CSH Vienna.
2022-05-(23-24) // New Publication!: Together with a former postdoc of the group @PrateekVerma and the Guy Reeves and collaborators fro mthe Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, a new paper is accepted in the American Naturalist on The effects of mating complexity on gene-drive dynamics Congratulations!
2022-05-(23-24) // Visiting Bern!: @Chaitanya is visiting the group of Claudia Bank at the University of Bern!
2022-05-18 // Meeting in Delft for EvoGamesPlus!: The Summer School for EvoGamesPlus takes place in Delft, the Netherlands with @Chaitanya giving a talk on Stochastic dynamics of complex evolutionary games
2022-04-25 // At the Bundestag!: Along with R. Guy Reeves from the MPI, @Chaitanya visits the Bundestag (The Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany) as a scientific expert taking part in a meeting on Gene-drives and vaccines for malaria
2022-03-18 // @Gosia leaves for London: As a part of her secondment in the EvoGamesPlus project, @Gosia leaves for London to work with Mark Broom for the next few months. We miss her already!
2022-03-25 // Retreat 2022!: A fantastic lab retreat with the group of @MeikeWittman from Bielefeld. A lot of discussions on science and more importantly… how to do it productively!
2022-03-16 // New paper on collective narratives: Developed together with Marcus Frean and Joseph Bulbulia, a new paper by @Chaitanya is out in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications on how Collective narratives catalyse cooperation!
2022-03-15 // Public talk at the MPI by @Chaitanya: Today evening at 1900 hrs Chaitanya gives a public talk at the MPI (in German) on Die Macht der Propaganda - Die Bedeutung von Geschichten für kollektives Handeln
2022-01-10 // New paper for 2022!: Led by Yuanxiao Gao from the parent Theory Department, @Chaitanya has a paper accepted in the J.R.Soc. Interface on “Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity”!
2022-01-10 // A Happy New Year!!!: Hoping that 2022 brings with it the respite that 2021 promised! With a new year comes a new preprint. @NikhilSharma who interned in the group worked on Leveraging Parrondo’s paradox for sustainable agriculture, now out on preprint
2021-12-06 // @Dana has her first TAC: @Dana experienced her first Thesis Advisory Committee meetings. The group is committed to help Dana out in what it takes to succeed in her research. Good luck!!
2021-11-26 // @Gosia shines at the EvoGames+ Winter School: Marie Curie Funded ITN - EvoGamesPlus had its first Winter Schoold and Gosia became the champion of the quizzes! Many Congratulations!!!
2021-10-06 // Great talk by @Dana: in the first in-person department meeting (hybrid) since the relaxation of the pandemic rules, @Dana gave an amazing talk about how the use of chemical and physical control methods help curb the spread of Johnson grass and tackle resistance evolution!
2021-10-04 // New paper by @Chaitanya: With Stefano Giaimo and Philippe Remigi @Chaitanya explores how ``Memory shapes microbial populations” is now out in PloS Computational Biology!
2021-08-16 // A very warm welcome to Małgorzata Fic: new PhD student in our group!! Looking forward to some excellent future interactions!
2021-08-09 // New paper by @Prateek: Prateek’s paper on ``A common gene drive language eases regulatory process and eco-evolutionary extensions” is now out in BMC Ecology and Evolution.. Congratulations!!! there are quite a few typesetting issues we see so we refer the readers to the biorxiv version which is also open to access!
2021-06-26 // New paper in JTB: Together with Fabrizio Mafessoni from the MPI for Anthropology and Michael Lachmann from the Santa Fe Institute a new paper on the fitness value of information is now out in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
2021-03-22 // A very warm welcome to Dana Lauenroth: new PhD student in our group!! Looking forward to some excellent future interactions!
2021-02-12 // Vandana continues to shine from her postdoc - new paper from her PhD is accepted!: Vandana’s paper on modeling multiple sexual traits is accepted in Evolution as mentioned by the reviewer ”..such a model was long overdue! Congratulations!!
2021-02-04 // Hyejin Park’s paper with Chaitanya and Frederic is accepted in Genetics: Hyejin Park’s fabulous work on the persistence of REPIN sequences inside bacterial genomes with Chaitanya and Frederic Bertels is accepted in Genetics! Congratulations!
2021-01-01 // @Prateek’s paper published in Proc R. Soc. B.: Fantastic work by @Prateek and collaborator got published over the holidays! Congratulations!!!
2020-10-15 // Chaitanya in Toulouse for two months: Chaitanya is away from Ploen for two months on a Visiting Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Toulouse.
2020-08-07 // Long due update and the upcoming eSMB: Summer in Plön is in full swing with lots of swimming in the lakes! Looking ahead to the mostly cancelled conference season, the ECMTB in Heidelberg, merged into the eSMB is hosting our minisymposium on “Eco-evolutionary dynamics across scales of organisation” organised together with Meike Wittmann.
2020-05-26 // Good news in grey times!: Some things to look up to during these Covid times. While the current scientific work in the group is on the backseat, a paper submitted before has gone through mSystems. Thanks to coauthor Jai Denton and the reviewers who found time in these trying times.
2020-05-06 // The group in Cov2: Updates have been lacking but we as a group are doing well!! Currently focusing mostly on well-being and health while helping out with spreading awareness. In the meantime @Prateek has a new publication out on bioRxiv on strategy updating and wealth inequality! Yay!!
2020-03-06 // Congratulations to Dr. Maria Bargués i Ribera: @Maria sucesfully defended her PhD thesis. Great job and many more successes in the future!!
2020-03-03 // Welcome @Nikhil Sharma: @Nikhil is a new intern in TEcoEvo workign at the interface of evolutionary games and antibiotic resistance evolution. Welcome!!
2020-02-27 // @Chaitanya discusses gene drive on deterktor.fm: @Chaitanya participated in a podcast discussing #genedrive, its applications and risks involved. Check it out on Detektor.fm (in German).
2020-02-24 // Congratulations to Dr. Vandana Revathi Venkateswaran: @vandana sucesfully defended her PhD thesis becoming the first PhD student to graduate through TEcoEvo. Many congratulations and wishing you a lot of success in the future!!
2020-02-11 // PhD position open: One PhD position is open in the group through the IMPRS. The three projects to choose from are listed here
2020-01-16 // Visit to Bielefeld: @Chaitanya visited the Department of Theoretical Biology headed by Meike Wittmann at the University of Bielefeld. Great to talk to the researchers doing wonderful work in theory and experiments in Animal Behaviour. Also, impressive buildings!

2020-01-06 // A Very Happy New Decade to all: The group is back in full force with @Vandana’s fantastic work on the consequences of combining life-history traits which have sex-specific differences out on bioRxiv! Congratulations!!!
2019-12-11 // Paper by @maria in PLOS Computational Biology: Work on eco-evolutionary agriculture by @MariaBargués is accepted for publication. Congratulations!!! Here’s to many more!
2019-12-06 // Celebrating the year!: Had a relaxed evening with some raclette, chats and board games to celebrate 2019 and the awesome science that we enjoyed this year and looking forward to a wonderful new year ahead.. Many more adventures to come :)
2019-09-25 // BfN meeting at the MPI: The Bundesamt fuer Naturschuetz, who fund the gene drive project in the group were visiting the Institute. @PrateekVerma gave a fantastic talk that was appreciated by all present! Bravo!
2019-09-18 // Move to the “Pink Residence”: The T-Eco-Evo group has successfully moved in with the rest of the Theory Department (Group of @JennaGallie still away :( ). Looking forward to the deeper interactions while keeping in touch with the rest of the Institute!
2019-08-29 // Departmental Retreat 2019: Our group participated in the yearly departmental retreat at Schlagsülsdorf - the reatreat was a great success with informal discussions about the workings of the department/institute and the MPS in general.
2019-07-22 // MMEE2019 was a great success in Lyon: @Chaitanya presented his work with @MarcusFrean and @JoeBulbulia on belief: catalyst for cooperation.
2019-06-04 // Breathing Life into Chemistry!: Meeting begins at the MPI today on Breathing Life into Chemistry
2019-05-13 // Welcome @PrateekVerma: @PrateekVerma joins t-eco-evo as a new postdoc focusing on Risk assessment of gene drive systems. Welcome Prateek!
2019-05-03 // @JosefHofbauer and @ChristinaPawlowitsch visit: It was a fantastic visit by excellent researchers @Pawlowitsch talking about evolutionary games back from the p.o.v of economics and the legend @JosefHofbauer discussing costly signaling games. Wahnsinn!
2019-04-01 // @JaiDenton won the KAKENHI grant: @Jaidenton won the KAKENHI grant (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) as a PI for our joint project on Understanding How The Environment Shapes Mutualism. Congratulations!
2019-03-21 // @ChristelKamp visiting from PEI: @ChristelKamp is visiting the group from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute. Fun discussio nand future project discussions from codon evolution to phage therapy!
2019-02-28 // @Maria visiting Rothamsted: @Maria is visiting @NicholHawkins and others at the Rothamsted Research in the UK to discuss her work on Eco-evo informed Sustainable Agriculture!
2019-02-14 // @ErnestLiu visiting the group: @ErnestLiu from Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute is visiting us for a couple of days. Today he gave fantastic talk about the origin of self-replication.
2019-01-26 // Innovation in Spiders!: Working with @AnneWignall from Massey University @Chaitanya has pushed a manuscript on to the bioRxiv about Portia behaviour!
2019-01-23 // Paper in Life: A review paper with @JaiDenton has been accepted in the special issue of the journal Life on Synthetic Biology: From Living Computers to Terraformation where we define and discuss the state-of-the-art of synthetic biology and its potential uses in mutualism ranging from taking care of Earth to terrraforming Mars!
2019-01-14 // Happy New Year!: After a week in the Philippines for iWOMB @Chaitanya is back in the lab. Also we published a paper in J.R.Soc.Open Science with @HyeJinPark. Great start to the New Year!!
2018-12-10 // Department Christmas Dinner: Had our department Christmas dinner after a nice walk through Prinzeninsel!
2018-12-07 // Vaibhvi finishes rotation: Vaibhvi from the IMPRS finished her rotation in the group. She worked on a fascinating project Nutrition-Immunity relationship in a social context. Good luck to Vaibhvi and hopefully we continue the work in the future!
2018-12-04 // GL Retreat: The group leader retreat took place at Koppelsberg, yesterday and today. Interesting talks and discussion about the ecology and evolution of group leaders and the Institute!
2018-11-15 // Department group picture: We took a new (old) group picture for the department… coming soon!!