Dear all, The next Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution will take place in Copenhagen, 28 June - 2 July 2026. We are organising a symposium on 'The evolution of recombination landscapes' (see details below), with Aurora Ruiz-Herrera from UAB Barcelona as our invited speaker. Don't hesitate to submit your abstract to our Symposium: https://smbe2026.org/ Abstract submission deadline: February 3 2026 Marie Raynaud, Laurent Duret & Susan Johnston SMBE2026 Symposium 11 | The evolution of recombination landscapes Organisers: Marie Raynaud Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (Female) Laurent Duret Laboratoire de Biomi ©trie et Biologie Evolutive (LBBE), Lyon, France (Male) Susan Johnston Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (Female) Invited Speaker: Aurora Ruiz-Herrera Moreno Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain (Female) Meiotic recombination is a key evolutionary mechanism. It ensures proper chromosome segregation and accelerates responses to selection by generating novel haplotypes. At the same time, recombination is also mutagenic, can disrupt favourable allelic combinations, reducing the fitness of subsequent generations, and may interfere with selection via biased gene conversion. The genomic landscape of recombination rates shows striking variation within and between chromosomes, individuals, sexes, population and species, yet the causes and consequences of this variation remain poorly understood. Recent methodological advances now allow fine-scale resolution of recombination events and cross-species comparisons. Emerging approaches such as Hi-C, single-cell sequencing, and improved cytological methods (e.g., FACS) are also providing new insights into the functional basis of recombination regulation and its links to phenotypic traits. Together, these developments are opening new avenues to characterize the molecular mechanisms of recombination regulation, the evolutionary forces shaping variation, and the consequences of recombination for adaptation, genomic conflict, and genome architecture. This symposium aims to foster cross-disciplinary exchange, and identify new discoveries in the evolution of recombination landscapes. It will bring together biologists addressing the proximate and ultimate causes of recombination rate variation across the tree of life and its evolutionary consequences. We seek submissions spanning topics broadly related to recombination's role in evolution, including theoretical and simulation approaches, methodological advances, field and experimental systems and studies of recombination modifiers (e.g., genetic variants, chromosomal rearrangements). Laurent Duret (to subscribe/unsubscribe the EvolDir send mail to golding@mcmaster.ca)