Absence of line fields and Mane's theorem for non-recurrent   transcendental functions
  Let f be a transcendental meromorphic function. Suppose that the finite part of the postsingular set of f is bounded, that f has no recurrent critical points or wandering domains, and that the degree of pre-poles of f is uniformly bounded. Then we show that f supports no invariant line fields on its Julia set.   We prove this by generalizing two results about rational functions to the transcendental setting: a theorem of Mane about the branching of iterated preimages of disks, and a theorem of McMullen regarding absence of invariant line fields for "measurably transitive" functions. Both our theorems extend results previously obtained by Graczyk, Kotus and Swiatek. 
Lasse Rempe and Sebastian van Strien