News

2024

Sept 2024: Kayla was awarded membership in the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.
Sept 2024: Welcome to Alex Wiebe who is starting her NSERC CGS MSc degree! She will be examining the role of evolutionary history in shaping the microbiomes of intertidal snail communities here on the west coast.
Aug 2024: Welcome to Luis Silva who is starting his post-doc with us! He travelled from Jacob Koella’s group in Uni Neuchatel in Switzerland. Luis will be exploring the evolutionary implications of super-spreading for pathogens.
June 2024: Judy Li has arrived to start her post-doctoral fellowship with us investigating the microbiome and virome of polar bears. Welcome!
June 2024: Mike Blazanin arrived from Paul Turner’s group in Yale to start his post-doctoral position with the King and Otto Labs. Welcome! He will be tackling the impact of host defence heterogeneity on pathogen virulence evolution using evolution experiments and theory.
April 2024: Antoine Filion has joined us for a few months to work on a computational project studying the role of host biodiversity on the spread of avian malaria. Welcome!
March 2024: Kim has been given Honourable Mention for the Dobzhansky Prize at the Society for the Study of Evolution. So proud!
Feb 2024: Kim has published two additional papers from her post-doctoral project, one in American Naturalist and another in Symbiosis. Amazing!
Jan 2024: Congratulations to Emily, who has left to start her Assistant Professorship at Keele University! 
Jan 2024: Judy and Emily have had a worm microbiome paper accepted in Phil Trans B. Congrats!
Jan 2024: Kim has had her big worm evolution experiment accepted for publication in Current Biology. Wow!!

2023

Nov 2023: Ian Will has joined us from the University of Central Florida to start a post-doc investigating the mechanisms underpinning host responses to warming and infection. Welcome, Ian!
Nov 2023: Kayla has been appointed the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Evolutionary Dynamics of Host-Pathogen Interactions worth $8M CAD. Government Announcement. UBC Zoology Announcement
Oct 2023: Dominik Vinopal has arrived from Norwich to begin his PhD in Zoology. Welcome!
Oct 2023: Kieran moved to an Assistant Professorship at Queen Mary-University of London. Congratulations!
Oct 2023: Kayla has joined the UBC-Hakai Sentinels of Change Team to evaluate patterns of parasite/microbiome biodiversity change in the Salish Sea.
Sept 2023: Serena Johnson has started her PhD in Zoology with us. She joins us after completing her MA in Oxford Biology. Welcome!.
Sept 2023: Chelsea Higgins joins us from University of Iowa where she completed her MSc. She will be working towards her PhD in Zoology. Welcome!
Sept 2023: Georgia moved to an Independent Fellowship at Collegium Helveticum Zurich. Amazing!
Sept 2023: Cameron Smith has started a post-doc position with us, moving from the University of Bath. Cameron will be modelling the evolutionary epidemiology of pathogens in immune-primed hosts. Welcome!
July 2023: Kayla received the Mid-Career Excellence Award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.
June 2023: Manisha Dosanjh joins the King Lab as our UBC Lab Manager. Welcome! 
June 2023: Leah Fulton, Melissa Chen, and Sarzana Hossain have joined our lab in conjunction with Prof. Cara Haney’s lab at UBC. Welcome!
May 2023: The first of the new recruits to the UBC-based lab. James Forward joins as a Directed Studies undergraduate. Welcome!
May 2023: Judy joins us at UBC from Oxford in the final months of her DPhil.
March 2023: Kayla has moved to the University of British Columbia! The King Lab group will be split between UBC and Oxford until 2026. 
Feb 2023: Kayla, Justyna Wolinska (FU Berlin), and Matt Hall (Monash) organised a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on ‘Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world‘ 
Feb 2023: Georgia and Iela (summer undergraduate student) had a paper accepted in Biology Letters. Congratulations! 
Jan 2023: Very exciting! Kayla was elected as a Fellow in the Linnean Society of London. https://www.linnean.org/The-Socie

2022

Nov 2022: Kayla was awarded the Zoological Society of London’s prestigious Scientific Medal
Oct 2022: Georgia (and former student, Suzie Ford) had a paper accepted in Heredity.
Oct 2022: Kim published a dispatch in Current Biology and was interviewed by The Scientist
Sept 2022: Judy’s first PhD paper was accepted in Global Change Biology. Extreme cooling and heating in experiments can reduce host microbiota diversity!
Sept 2022: Emma joins us from the University of Amsterdam on a MSc internship. Welcome!
July 2022: Sam officially joins the King Lab and will be co-advised by Prof. Craig Maclean. Very exciting! Sam will be exploring the impacts of fever-like temperatures on bacteria-phage coevolution.
July 2022: Kim, Toby, and Judy have published a collaborative effort on symbiosis and heating in TREE.
June 2022: Yunyun joins us on a CSC visiting student internship from China. Welcome!
May 2022: Kayla was interviewed by Current Biology on her career.

April 2022: Former labbies – Charlotte, Alice, and Jordan – as well as collaborators have published a long-standing project on host-parasite coevolution in Current Biology.

April 2022: Kim published her first paper with the King Lab. An extensive review on immune priming by symbionts in Microbiology.

Feb 2022: Kim was awarded an American Naturalist Young Investigator Prize. Amazing, Kim!

2021

Dec 2021: Kayla was awarded the Canadian Society of Zoologists R.A. Wardle Medal for outstanding contributions to the study of parasitism, immunity, and environment.
Nov 2021: Georgia’s meta-analysis in American Naturalist was accepted on the role of symbiont density to benefits/costs of symbiosis
Sept 2021: Kayla is an International Visiting Fellow at Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies and Biodiversity Research Centre, UBC
July 2021: Kieran’s paper on Leucobacter accepted in Trends in Microbiology.
May 2021: Paper with Kieran accepted in Molecular Ecology, our first with the C.elegans-Leucobacter parasite system. 
April 2021: Emily’s and Kieran’s review on host microbiota facilitating infectious disease accepted in PLoS Pathogens.
April 2021: Welcome to Toby Hector as a Philip Leverhulme Prize post-doc. Toby joins us from Matt Hall’s lab at Monash University in Australia, and he will be exploring the impact of temperature stress on parasite virulence evolution.
March 2021: Congratulations to Emily on her non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship at Linacre College!
March 2021: Paper with Georgia and Emily on evolutionary transitions across the parasite-mutualist continuum accepted in Nature Reviews Microbiology.

2020

Nov 2020: We look forward to welcoming Dr. Toby Hector as a new Philip Leverhulme Prize post-doc in the lab.
Nov 2020: Paper with Suzie accepted in Molecular Biology and Evolution as part of her Wellcome Trust ISSF post-doc.
Oct 2020: Snail microbiome paper with US colleagues – Laura Bankers (Colorado), Maurine Neiman (Iowa), Dylan Dahan (Stanford) – and UK colleauges (Greg Hurst, Liverpool) accepted in Evolutionary Applications.
August 2020: Lab reopened amidst pandemic lockdowns
June 2020: Congratulations to Dr. Maria Ordovas-Montanes who successfully defended in her thesis in the viva!
June 2020: Commentary on worsening inequalities in academia during covid lockdown with colleagues at U Liverpool (Zen Lewis and Greg Hurst) accepted in Current Biology
May 2020: Kim received a non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship from Kellogg College. Congratulations!
May 2020: Congratulations to Dr. Alice Ekroth who successfully defended her thesis!
May 2020: Paper with Dylan accepted in BMC Microbiology.
March 2020: Lab shut-down due to pandemic
March 2020: Welcome Kim Hoang! She is a prestigious NSF Fellow investigating the effect of immune-priming on parasite evolution with Tim Read (Emory) as our collaborator. Kim joins us from Nicole Gerardo’s and Levi Morran’s groups at Emory University.
Feb 2020: Congratulations to Kieran who just received a Junior Research Fellowship from St. Hilda’s College, Oxford!
Jan 2020: We are happy Jai Bolton has joined us as a DTP student. Jai will work on the impact of a super-spreaders on in a natural nematode-parasite system.

2019

Sept 2019: Welcome to Emily Stevens! She is an ERC post-doc on COEVOPRO and will explore the within-host evolutionary interactions between the microbiome and an novel pathogen.
Sept 2019: Welcome to Andrea Gomez! Andrea joins us as a SNSF Fellow investigating the coevolution of tick-borne pathogens.
March 2019: Welcome to Georgia Drew who joins us as an ERC post-doc on COEVOPRO!
February 2019: Kayla appeared on BBC Countryfile talking about microbiome diversity: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0c4365l
January 2019: Kieran started in the lab! Welcome!

2018

Nov 2018: Welcome back, Suzie Ford, who has started a Wellcome Trust post-doc in the group exploring the mechanisms underlying host immune responses to protective symbionts.
Sept 2018: Kieran Bates will join us in January as a post-doc investigating the evolution of resistance in the face of coinfection.
July 2018: Kayla was awarded an ERC Starting Grant (COEVOPRO) of ~€1.5 million over 5 years to examine the potential for coevolution in protective symbioses: https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/article/dr-kayla-king-awarded-erc-starting-grant
May 2018: Back from maternity leave.
April 2018: Paper with Charlotte, Dylan, and Ben Ashby accepted in Evolution Letters.
April 2018: Paper with Alex and Craig Maclean officially accepted in Science. Celebration!

2017

Nov 2017: Baby #2 arrived! Off on maternity leave.
Oct 2017: Kayla received a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize.
Sept 2017: Alex successfully defended his DPhil thesis. Well done! Thanks to Mike Brockhurst for visiting us and doing the examining. Alex now joins us as a JRF at St. Hilda’s.
July 2017: New theory papers accepted in Evolution Letters and BMC Evolutionary Biology.
July 2017: Rachel Murray-Watson joins us from Imperial College over the summer for a BBSRC undergraduate research project. Welcome, Rachel!
May 2017: The lab has more publicity, Alex is featured on BBC doc ‘Michael Mosley vs. the Superbugs‘: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08qkz77
April 2017: Alice passed her transfer viva into the department and the group. Congrats, Alice!
Feb 2017: Alex received a Junior Research Fellowship from St. Hilda’s College to continue his work in the lab on host-parasite interactions in a community context. Congratulations, Alex!
Jan 2017: Listen to my participation on BBC In Our Time discussion on PARASITES: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bb9cy
Jan 2017: Our new lab technician, Jordan Sealey, joins us from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Welcome, Jordan!

2016

Dec 2016: Congratulations to Suzie on her successful PhD viva! Suzie is now off to a post-doc with Beth McGraw at Monash University.
Nov 2016: Check out the online fun associated with Suzie’s new paper in Nature Communications.   
Oct 2016: Alice Ekroth join the lab as PhD students. Welcome! <
Oct 2016: New papers accepted in Molecular Ecology and Nature Communications. Congrats Suzie!
Sept 2016: New review paper with Alex and Charlotte out in Trends in Parasitology.
July 2016: Our work is highlighted in Journal of Experimental Biology: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/219/13/1938?trendmd-shared=0
July 2016: Maria joins us as a DTP PhD student to investigate the evolutionary processes underlying host recognition of good and bad microbes. Welcome!
May 2016: Paper on wasp male-killer accepted into PLoS Pathogens.
March 2016: Check out the National Geographic feature of our work by Ed Yong: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/28/microbes-can-quickly-evolve-to-protect-hosts-from-disease/
March 2016: New paper accepted in Evolution. Alex’s first PhD paper, with more to come.
Feb 2016: New opinion piece accepted in PLoS Pathogens with Suzie on the evolutionary implications of protective microbes.
Jan 2016: Dylan joins us as a DTP PhD student to investigate the local adaptation of protective microbes to host populations. Welcome, Dylan.

2015

Dec 2015: Paper accepted in ISME on experimental evolution of protective microbes in C. elegans! Stay tuned for much much more…
July 2015: Another great paper from Charlotte’s PhD: http://www.cell.com/trends/parasitology/fulltext/S1471-4922%2815%2900119-1
June 2015: Kayla received a grant from the Leverhulme Trust to study adaptive evolution of protective microbes in our C. elegans system. Woo hoo!
June 2015: Congratulations to Charlotte on her PhD paper with Gerrit Joop in BMC Evol Biol: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/15/112
June 2015: Back from maternity leave.

2014

Nov 2014: Baby arrived!
Sept 2014: Charlotte has joined the lab as an OUP John Fell post-doc. She will be exploring the coevolutionary processes underlying microbial protection against parasites. Welcome, Charlotte.
July 2014: Alex has a new first-author paper out in PNAS on ‘Contrasted coevolutionary dynamics between a bacterial pathogen and its bacteriophages’ from his MSc project with Michael Hochberg. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/11/1406763111.abstract
Check out his interview with Oxford Science Blog: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/land-bacteria-eaters
July 2014: Jack (2nd year undergrad) has joined the lab for the summer to determine if sexual and asexual planarians deal with bacterial infection differently – collaboration with Aziz Aboobaker’s group. Welcome, Jack.
May 2014: Helen received a 3-year Exhibition 1851 Fellowship to work on parasite virulence evolution in structured host populations using C. elegans. She will be working with us and with Frank Jiggins’ group in Cambridge. Welcome, Helen.
May 2014: Hannah joined the lab for her final year project to investigate the role of host genotype in mediating the outcome of coinfections. Welcome, Hannah.
April 2014: Paper with old Lively labmates out in Biology Letters on parasites and promiscuity: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/4/20131091.full
Jan 2014: Alex joined the group as a DTP PhD student to investigate the mechanisms underlying the evolution of host microbial protection. Welcome, Alex.
Jan 2014: Crystal is visiting the lab from the University of Toronto to explore the effect of age-structure in host populations on pathogen virulence evolution. Welcome, Crystal.

2013

Sept 2013: Suzie co-authored a paper in Nature Reviews Microbiology with Prof. Martin Maiden – http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v11/n10/abs/nrmicro3093.html?  – from her honours project.

Sept 2013: The King Lab is up and running at the University of Oxford!