Transgenerational plasticity and antiviral immunity in the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) against Ostreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1)
By: Lafont, Maxime, Priscila Goncalves, Ximing Guo, Caroline Montagnani, David Raftos, and Timothy Green. Developmental & Comparative Immunology 91 (2019): 17-25. | Find with Google Scholar »
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Hi all,
The end of the year is nigh – this is the last newsletter for 2018 and it is full of good news and reasons for celebration! This week academic staff were on retreat at the MQ City Campus – we had two very productive and enjoyable days discussing research and L&T. Thank you to our leaders for the two days – Andy Barron and Drew Allen. As you can see from the pictures below, some very important networking was also achieved. We also celebrated the receipt of a SILVER award for sustainability – the first academic department to receive the award (Environmental Sciences was a close second, being only 2 days behind). Thanks to our sustainability team for their efforts!
The university will shut down from 21 December until 2 January – all requests for access (with risk assessment) during this period need to be received by Sharyon today – info on how to apply has been sent out several times over the past few weeks.
I will be on leave from 21 Dec, returning 21 January. Thank you to all students and staff for a productive and happy year in Biology – it’s a pleasure to be part of such a great department.
cheers,
Michelle
-click on thumbnail for larger image-
Thanks to Rachael Dudaniec for the images.
Save the Date
This coming week 17th – 21st December
It’s oh so quiet…
Following week 24th – 28th December
Dec 24, 2018 – Jan 1 2019 Inclusive – University shutdown.
Future Events
2019
Feb 14th: 6WW (E8C) Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9.00am – 11:30am; 6WW (E8C) – 106.
Feb 15th: 4WW (F7B) Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9.30am – 11:30am; 4WW (F7B) – 105.
Feb 19th: 14EAR (E8A) Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9.00am – 12:00pm; 14EAR (E8A) – 120 (Red Lab).
General News and Announcements
In Case You Missed It, Read About Brian Atwell’s Commercialisation Success!
This week’s Sustainability Morning Tea Silver Accreditation Celebration
Four of Our Researchers Make the 2018 Highly-Cited List – Ian Wright, Mark Westoby, Hendrik Poorter and Colin Prentice were all identified as Highly-Cited Researchers in Ecology/Environment or Plant and Animal Sciences in this year’s list. Congratulations to all! https://hcr.clarivate.com/
Even More Congratulations go to Lizzy Lowe, for being named in 2018’s list of the superstars of STEM, announced today by Science & Technology Australia (STA). Lizzy is an urban ecologist, passionate about working with local communities to improve the health of our cities with a particular passion for raising the public profile of under-appreciated animals such as spiders, and encouraging engagement with nature in cities. STA created Superstars of STEM to create a critical mass of celebrity Australian female scientists and technologists – role models for young women and girls – and to work towards equal representation in the media of women and men working in all fields in STEM.
As an aside, another successful Superstar of STEM, Georgia Ward-Fear, will be transferring across to Macquarie from USyd with Rick Shine next year, so we’ll have two in the department!
2018 Department Award Winners – following on from last week’s photos, here are the department award recipients and their meritorious service:
- Drew Allen – for outstanding leadership, persistence and patience during the curriculum architecture project
- Julian May – for outstanding support and general helpfulness
- Caitlin Kordis – for outstanding support and willingness to help
- Masood – for fabulous technical support
- Nick Harris – for fabulous technical support
- Alison Downing and her Plant of the Week Team for providing a fantastic inspiration about plants every single week
- Alex Carthey & Rachael Gallagher for fabulous weekly seminar organisation over the last 2 years
- Jemma Geoghegan & Michelle Power for their hard work in design and wrangling for the new BMedSci
- Marita Holley for her hard work in designing and organising the new Biosciences building
- Josh Aldridge – for great support with the move to the new building
- Martin Whiting – for managing to produce twins in a teaching session
Congratulations! To Fiona McDougall for receiving a Scholarship from the Royal Society of New South Wales. This award recognises Fiona’s outstanding achievements as a young scientist in equine genomics. Well done!
Outreach Superstars – On behalf of the Department, the Outreach Committee wishes to thank all our staff and students who have participated in Outreach activities this year. We recognise the time and effort that goes into designing and delivering these diverse and engaging activities, and we seriously value your contributions as well as your diligence at documenting your effortsI Below we have highlighted our Outreach Superstars – you are all amazing! THANK YOU!
Chris Reid, Culum Brown, Francisco Martínez Baena (Paco), Grant Hose, Jane Williamson, Jemma Geoghegan, Jessica Wilks, Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons, Julianna Kadar, Kate Dodds, Ken Cheng, Kerstin Bilgmann, Koa Webster, Lesley Hughes, Lesley Nearn-Cavanagh, Libby Eyre, Linda Beaumont, Lizzy Lowe, Lorraine Hardwick, Martin Whiting, Melanie Bishop, Michael Gillings, Winnie Man, Sanscha Regtop, Michelle Leishman, Michelle Power, Nola Hancock, Rachael Dudaniec, Samantha Newton, Sara Daniela Godinez Espinosa and Simon Griffith.
Photo Competition Winner – HDR student Annabell Wall – Congratulations to our draw winner, HDR student Annabell. She has won a $100 giftcard in our last photo competition for the year. Have a look at the stunning image below (click for larger view).
IMPORTANT NOTICE – legacy (guttenburg) printing ends at 10pm Friday night, 14th Dec 2018. You must set up iPrint ASAP if you have not done so already, and update your campus card (old fobs will not work) if you use an old fob or old campus card. If you have trouble setting up the iPrint drivers on your computer, please contact FSE IT for assistance.
SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS
Registrations open for Wildlife Translocation Health Symposium in February 2019 – The Symposium will provide a comprehensive review of the health disciplines that should be taken into consideration during translocations and intensive wildlife management actions, along with some key note addresses about the ecology of translocations and disease ecology. Carl Jones, Chief Scientist with Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, will be delivering the translocation ecology keynote. Carl has extensive experience with intensive wildlife recovery programs on Mauritius, Africa and the UK.
Personal meetings can be organised with ecologist Carl Jones the following morning for select personnel who are involved in wildlife translocation or similar intensive management.
HDR OPPORTUNITIES
Session 1, 2019 Casual Teaching Applications are Now Open – Applications close Friday 21 December 2018.
Click here to apply. Please contact <caitlin.kordis@mq.edu.au> with any questions.
Are you a HDR student? Need help with writing? – HDR Mentors in collaboration with HDR Learning Skills is running another round of Peer Writing Assistance (PWA) for the rest of the year! This program is designed to support MRES and HDR candidates in managing thesis writing and research-related concerns. All peer writing assistants have undergone training for their role and are current PhD candidates at Macquarie. Registrations are now open for individual consultation bookings. If you are interested, please go to book in for a 30-minute session with a PWA. If you have questions about the PWA program please email <hdrmentors@mq.edu.au>.
ADMIN THINGS
Not receiving general emails? – We have had some trouble with the email lists. If you or anyone you know seems to have dropped off the email lists to receive department seminar notices, Department Matters, etc, please email or drop in to see Jenny Ghabache in the admin office.
Outreach Activities – Have You Participated in an Activity for Biology Recently? Don’t forget to fill in the super-quick form here – ACCESS OUTREACH FORM HERE
Building Name Changes – Cheat Sheet – If you are trying to identify buildings on campus with new names or old names, please use this link to convert them from old to new or vice versa.
OPPORTUNITIES
Columbia University: Science Fellows in Frontiers of Science – Teaching & Research post-doc – Frontiers of Science is a one-semester course that integrates modern science into the Core Curriculum of Columbia College in order to introduce exciting scientific ideas and inculcate scientific habits of mind. The program will appoint a number of post-doctoral fellows in the natural sciences for the academic year 2019-2020. Applications are sought from qualified candidates who have received or expect to receive the Ph.D. before June 30, 2019 and have demonstrated teaching experience. Columbia Science Fellows hold the rank of Lecturer in Discipline in an appropriate natural science department. The fellowship is renewable for a second and third year based on satisfactory performance. Fellows teach two once-per-week seminar sections each semester, attend the weekly course lecture, faculty meeting and pedagogical seminar, participate in the curriculum development for the course, including course-wide assessments, and carry out research at Columbia. In addition to teaching and research, the Fellows engage in the intellectual life of the department of affiliation. A competitive salary is supplemented by an annual research allowance.
For more information on the program, please contact Jessica Cubas at <fos@columbia.edu>. To apply, please visit our online site: https://pa334.peopleadmin.com/postings/2114 Deadline for applications is January 15, 2019.
Position Available – Future Earth Australia is advertising a research and policy position at 0.8FTE (https://www.science.org.au/about-us/careers/research-and-policy-officer-future-earth-australia). This person would work closely with the CEO and the FEA team, as well as across a broad stakeholder group. The closing date in 11 January 2019.
Title: BirdLife Australia Volunteering – The BirdLife Discovery Centre in Newington Armory, Sydney Olympic Park, is looking for volunteers. The Discovery Centre is open on the weekends from 10.00 am until 4.00 pm. There are no live birds but plenty of displays of stuffed ones; lots of things for kids to do and short videos to watch. There is also live streaming on the internet of the White-bellied Sea Eagles’ nest in the forest behind the Discovery Centre. There is also a free guided bird walk the last Sunday of each month (except December which, this year, will be on Sunday 16th) commencing at the Visitors Centre next to the bicycle hire at the wharf. Some knowledge of the common, local Australian birds would be required.
If interested please contact the volunteer coordinator Deborah Harris via email <daisyproctor@yahoo.co.uk>.
Call for Students & Volunteers for Plant-Pollinator Research – Prof Graham H. Pyke, UTS, is looking for Students and Volunteers to be involved in Plant-Pollinator research, focusing on plants of the genus Blandfordia, also known as Christmas Bells. Field trip timings starting late November through to the end of January, 2019. If this sounds interesting, please read the following documentation, and then contact contact Graham at <Graham.Pyke@uts.edu.au> for more information on trips.
Call for students & volunteers – Christmas Bells 2018-2019 #1 Sep 2018 General information re trips to Pt Macquarie #02 – Jan 2018 Photos re research at Pt Macquarie – Nov 2018
BLOGS AND OTHER THINGS OF INTEREST
Plant of the Week (continued from last week) – click on thumbnail to enlarge the image
The Christmas festive season provides us all with a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends and spend time with family. This week we feature some of the flowering plants from Australia and around the world that delight us at this time of year: New South Wales Christmas Bush, Poinsettias from Mexico, Blue and white Agapanthus from South Africa and New Zealand Christmas Bush. At this time we would also like to thank all those who have encouraged us and contributed in some way to this year’s stories, especially Jenny Ghabache and Ray Duell, Gina Hammond (Psychology), Leigh Staas, Karen Marais, Monika King, Muhammad Masood, David Edgecombe, Ross Peacock, Bill Chapman, Wade Tozer, Marie Herberstein, Lorraine Hardwick, Dick Frankham and Nola Hancock.
Correct Method for Submitting to Department Matters
Department Matters submissions now have their own email address. Please send all your news items for the newsletter to <fse.bionewsletter@mq.edu.au>
Also, please see the following to correctly format your additions, and keep them rolling in!
You may have noticed that we try to keep all the articles to the same format for the Department Matters, however, rest assured, they do NOT all turn up in this format! To help keep your Department Matters looking as good as possible, when sending in additions to the Newsletter, please try to keep these formatting guidelines in mind.
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Keeping to these guidelines will streamline your article’s addition to the newsletter. Thank you.
Have You Missed Out on an Issue of Department Matters? Back issues can be found at this newsletter archive link for your reading pleasure.
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New Publications
Quantifying leaf-trait covariation and its controls across climates and biomes
By: Yang, Yanzheng, Han Wang, Sandy P. Harrison, I. Colin Prentice, Ian J. Wright, Changhui Peng, and Guanghui Lin. New Phytologist (2018). | Find with Google Scholar »Soil water content variability drives productivity responses of a model grassland system to extreme rainfall events under elevated CO2
By: Manea, Anthony, and Michelle R. Leishman. Plant Ecology: 1-9. | Find with Google Scholar »Orchid diversity: Spatial and climatic patterns from herbarium records
By: Gaskett, Anne C., and Rachael V. Gallagher. Ecology and evolution (2018). | Find with Google Scholar »Barcoding and multi-locus phylogeography of the globally distributed calcareous tubeworm genus Hydroides Gunnerus, 1768 (Annelida, Polychaeta, Serpulidae)
By: Sun, Yanan, Eunice Wong, Shane T. Ahyong, Jane E. Williamson, Pat A. Hutchings, and Elena K. Kupriyanova. Molecular phylogenetics and evolution (2018). | Find with Google Scholar »Native reptiles alter their foraging in the presence of the olfactory cues of invasive mammalian predators
By: Webster, C., M. Massaro, D. R. Michael, D. Bambrick, J. L. Riley, and D. G. Nimmo. Royal Society open science 5, no. 10 (2018): 180136. | Find with Google Scholar »Seasonal Meandering of the Polar Front Upstream of the Kerguelen Plateau
By: Pauthenet, Etienne, Fabien Roquet, G. Madec, C. Guinet, M. Hindell, C. R. McMahon, R. Harcourt, and D. Nerini. Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 18 (2018): 9774-9781. | Find with Google Scholar »Predators Shape Sedimentary Organic Carbon Storage in a Coral Reef Ecosystem
By: Atwood, Trisha Brooke, Elizabeth Madin, Alastair Harborne, Edd Hammill, Osmar Luiz, Quinn Ollivier, Chris M. Roelfsema, Peter Ian Macreadie, and Catherine Lovelock. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 6 (2018): 110. | Find with Google Scholar »Evidence for Social Learning in a Family Living Lizard
By: Whiting, Martin J., Feng Xu, Fonti Kar, Julia L. Riley, Richard W. Byrne, and Daniel WA Noble. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2018). | Find with Google Scholar »Retinal Morphology and Visual Specializations in Three Species of Chimaeras, the Deep-Sea R-pacifica and C-lignaria, and the Vertical Migrator C-milii (Holocephali)
By: Garza-Gisholt, Eduardo, Nathan S. Hart, and Shaun P. Collin. Brain, behavior and evolution 92, no. 1-2 (2018): 47-62. | Find with Google Scholar »Incubation routine and associated changes in body mass of Gould’s Petrel (Pterodroma leucoptera)
By: Kim, Yuna, David Priddel, and Nicholas Carlile. Emu-Austral Ornithology 118, no. 2 (2018): 193-200. | Find with Google Scholar »Low‐temperature storage of Exorista larvarum puparia as a tool for assisting parasitoid production
By: Benelli, Maurizio, Tóth, Franciska, and Dindo, Maria L., 2018. Entomoligica, Experimentalis et Applicata. | Find with Google Scholar »Consequences of global shipping traffic for marine giants
By: Pirotta, Vanessa, Alana Grech, Ian D. Jonsen, William F. Laurance, and Robert G. Harcourt. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. | Find with Google Scholar »In the Media
Culum Brown was interviewed on ABC Radio Melbourne Afternoons
Associate Professor Culum Brown from the Department of Biological Sciences was interviewed on ABC Radio Melbourne Afternoons regarding squid anatomy and the difference between a squid, an octopus and a cuttlefish.
Catarina Vila Pouca was featured by Live Science and on Earth.com
Catarina Vila Pouca from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured by Live Science and on Earth.com regarding the effects of warming oceans on sharks’ brains.
Vanessa Pirotta was featured in the Daily Telegraph
Vanessa Pirotta from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured in the Daily Telegraph in relation to using drones to collect whale snot.