BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS | February 26, 2016

Dear all,

Session 1 is almost upon us – hopefully all unit convenors and teaching staff are prepared for the onslaught!

This week Department seminars return and there will be a welcome and what’s in store for 2016 for all HDR students – Friday 1pm in the tearoom.

There will also be the regular monthly department meeting on this Tuesday 1-2pm in the Biology tearoom – all welcome!

cheerio

Michelle

Save the Date

This is a new section, with events and meetings of specific interest within the Department.

This coming week 29th Feb/4th March

Mon 29th Feb; Special Seminar: Prof Marc Naguib; 1:00pm – 2:00pm; E8A-280 (tea room).

Tues 1st March; Department Meeting; 1:00pm – 2:00pm; E8A-280 (tea room).

Wed 2nd March; Morning Tea; 10:30am – 11:00am; E8A-280 (tea room).

Wed 2nd March; Weekly Seminar Series: Dr Mathieu Pernice; 1:00pm – 2:00pm; E8A-280 (tea room).

Thurs 3rd March: Social drinks in the courtyard from 5pm

Fri 4th March; E8A Digital Labs Makeup Induction; 9:00am – 11:00am; E8A-130 (Yellow Lab); contact Ray Duell.

Fri 4th March: HDR welcome and everything you need to know for 2016 session; 1-2pm Biology tearoom

Following week 7th – 11th March

Tues 8th March;G2G 2016 Launch Meeting; 1:00pm – 2:00pm; E8A-280 (tea room).

General News and Announcements

The Return of the Wednesday Weekly Departmental Seminar Series for 2016

This week we are kicking off with Dr Mathieu Pernice, Research Fellow, Deputy Team Leader Seagrass Health, Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney. His topic will be Single cell measurements of metabolic activity: towards a functional understanding of symbiotic interactions in corals.

Date/Time: Wed 2nd March, 2016, 1pm

Place: Biological Sciences Tea Room, E8A-280.

Abstract:

Symbiosis is a driving force of evolution and fundamental to the functioning of all ecosystems. Understanding in detail the manner in which symbiotic relationships function is not only a new scientific frontier, but also of great importance to environment sciences, because environmental change may perturb these relationships, with important ecological consequences.

Reefs based on scleractinian corals are among the most productive and biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. At the heart of their success as the architects of coral reefs is their symbiosis with dinoflagellate algae, which live within their tissues and provide corals with an enlarged metabolic repertoire. Despite clear evidence that reef-building corals can exchange nutrients with their dinoflagellate symbionts, the dynamics and precise roles played by host and symbionts in this fundamental process remain unclear.

In this talk, I will present recent advances in combining isotopic labeling and high resolution imaging in order to track the dynamics of nutrients incorporation within the intact symbiosis between reef-building corals and dinoflagellate symbionts. I will give different examples of studies using this innovative methodology (i) to establish the relative contribution of symbiont/host to assimilate nutrients, (ii) to better understand mechanisms driving metabolism in coral symbiosis and (iii) to demonstrate the functional diversity of dinoflagellate symbionts along microscale gradients of light and oxygen in coral tissue. The methods and results open up a new interdisciplinary frontier for the exploration of dynamics and spatial patterns associated with metabolic activities in microbial symbiosis and microalgae at a single cell level.

Did you know the department has a Facebook page?

You can find the department’s Facebook page here. It is managed by Hannah and Jennifer in the admin team but we are very keen to raise its profile and keep it exciting and interesting so please LIKE it if you are a Facebook user, suggest posts for it, share posts and post comments.

Genes to Geoscience – 2016 Launch Meeting – 8th March (1-2pm) in the Biology tearoom (E8A280).

You are invited to the 2016 Launch Meeting of the Genes to Geoscience Research Enrichment Program (GGREP), organised by the Genes to Geoscience Research Centre with support from the Faculty, CBMS, EPS and ENVS.

Please come along and find out what GGREP has to offer – all members of the Faculty of Science & Engineering are welcome! Coffee and tea will be provided.

The Genes to Geoscience Research Enrichment Program consists of a series of workshops and masterclasses designed to foster an environment where researchers can 1) encounter new research questions and possibilities across a wider range of fields than just in their own lab group, and 2) develop soft skills and generic skills.

The kinds of masterclasses and workshops that will run in GGREP this year include:

• Tutor inductions
• Learning how to program in R
• Using digital data collection systems
• Writing and communicating for science
• Transitioning from PhD to Early Career Researcher
• Transitioning to careers outside academia
• Trait Ecology
• Detecting signals of environmental selection in population genomics
• leadership in Science and Engineering
• Bioinformatics

At this Launch Meeting we’ll briefly explain Genes to Geoscience, the Research Enrichment Program, and the masterclasses on offer in 2016. You’ll have opportunity to ask questions, make suggestions, and enrol for the masterclasses.

Plant of the Week – Russelia equisetiformis – Firecracker Plant

A drought and salt tolerant plant with few leaves but compensatory photosynthetic stems. And if you live in the Americas, a great hummingbird plant for the garden.

New Students in Phil Taylor’s Lab

Tahereh Moadelli, from Iran, has recently commenced her PhD investigating larval nutrition of Queensland fruit flies, supervised by Phil Taylor and Fleur Ponton. Environmentally benign Sterile Insect Technique programs currently under development will require production of up to 100 million flies per week.  Economical large scale production of high quality flies requires a nuanced understanding of nutrition, physiology and key life history traits, and such strategic basic questions will be at the core of Tahereh’s PhD research.

Please welcome her.

Saleh Adnan, from Bangladesh, has recently commenced his PhD investigating the use of methoprene, a juvenile hormone analog, to promote development, pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection, and ecological performance of Queensland fruit flies, under the supervision of Phil Taylor and Chronis Rempoulakis.   The broader goal of Saleh’s project is to counter high field mortality of Queensland fruit flies released in Sterile Insect Technique pest management programs by increasing the proportion that mature and contribute to mating-induced sterility induction of pest populations.

Please help him feel welcome.

New Post-doctoral Fellow Working with Leanne Armand’s Group

Marine Lasbleiz is a new Endeavour Post-doctoral Fellow working with Leanne Armand’s team. To date, her research has investigated the link between marine phytoplankton community composition and the associated biogeochemical cycles (mainly those of carbon and silicon) in response to variable environmental conditions. As part of her thesis at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography in France, she has been specifically interested in examining the responses of marine phytoplankton to iron availability and the subsequent consequences on matter export efficiency by targeting the naturally iron-fertilized Kerguelen region in the Southern Ocean. Her project at the Macquarie University will aim to learn more about key factors driving carbon export to depth in this region by addressing diatom community composition and their species-specific physiological traits.

Please welcome Marine to Macquarie.

Visiting PhD Student: Michael Kloster

Michael Kloster is a PhD student from University of Bremen, Germany, and will join Leanne Armand’s group for three months. Back home he is supervised by Anya Waite and Bánk Beszteri, and located at the Hustedt Centre for Diatom Research, which is part of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. His main focus is on developing (semi-)automated data acquisition and analysis of light microscopic images, which he applies on diatom valves for assessing morphometric changes related to environmental conditions or life cycle. Currently he is in investigating on Fragilariopsis kerguelensis from sediment cores as well as from sediment traps, sampled from the Atlantic as well as from the Pacific part of the Southern Ocean.

Please help him feel welcome.

Lecturer in Ecology, Monash

Monash is advertising for a Lecturer in Ecology. Please feel free to circulate:

http://www.jobs-monash.jxt.net.au/academic-jobs/lecturer-biological-sciences/575340

Job with Campus Well-being

Campus well-being is looking for students to assist in Disability support. The job would be up to 10 hours per week (HEW 3, $35.79 per hour) and would involve taking notes and uploading them onto iLearn. There is a training package and support available. Starting week 1!

Contact: Nicole Saunders, Administration Coordinator Campus Wellbeing T: +61 2 9850 1043

Environmental Volunteering Survey – Are you an environmental volunteer?

The NSW Environmental Trust is planning new initiatives to better support environmental volunteers and volunteer programs, but we need to know what is important to volunteers first. To discover this, the Trust is conducting a survey of environmental volunteers and we would really appreciate your participation so that we can include your views.

Who should do the survey?…. anyone who has done ANY kind of unpaid work (‘on-ground’, administrative or other support, advocacy, fundraising) that benefits the environment, with an organisation (government or non-government) or group, in the past 12 months.

By completing our survey you are helping volunteer programs AND you can enter our prize draw for a one year NSW National Parks entry pass for one vehicle.

Please click on the link below to start the survey, which should take up to 20 minutes to complete. The survey data is being collected by Quality Online Research. All responses are confidential and no individual will be identified in analysis or reporting.

The survey will close on Monday 7 March 2016.

If you have any questions, please contact Nicole Balodis at the NSW Environmental Trust on 02 8837 6068.

The Conservation Cafe This March!

This March, Sydney-SCB welcomes Dr. Cameron Webb, Hospital Scientist (Westmead Hospital) and Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Medical Entomology, Sydney Uni. Dr. Webb is interested in the role of mosquitoes in local ecosystems and his work is concerned with how wetlands are constructed and rehabilitated so that they do not pose an increased risk of pest or public health concerns.Dr. Webb will discuss: “Mosquitoes, we hate them but are they important to the environment?”

March 5, 10:00am

Centennial Parklands
RSVP on https://ConservationCafeMarch16.eventbrite.com.au

(also see attached for more information)

Conservation Cafe March 2016

Ian Jonsen’s latest paper headlines the IMOS bulletin

IMOS Bulletin #51
February 2016

Paper of the month
This month we’d like to highlight the following paper that references IMOS data:

Jonsen, Ian. Joint estimation over multiple individuals improves behavioural state inference from animal movement data. Scientific Reports 6, February 2016. doi:10.1038/srep20625

Ian Jonsen a researcher based at Macquarie University, has tested two prominent marine animal-tracking models to determine which is better at inferring the movements of Weddell seals using IMOS tracking data.

Currently, many problems arise when scientists try to correctly locate and map the movements of an animal using satellite data, which often contains location errors. Dr Jonsen looked at how these two models cope with satellite errors when inferring the movements of marine predators, such as Weddell seals. The study used large satellite tracking datasets, collected by IMOS to unravel the movement behaviours of the seals.

Interdisciplinary Ecology and Evolution Lab Internship

Our lab (www.i-deel.org) is offering one scientific internship/apprenticeship (or volunteer position) for up to 6 months to help set up our lab. We are located at the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre (E&ERC) within the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. The intern will be engaged in variety of scientific work (mainly, setting up zebrafish behavioural and physiological experiments, helping conduct comparative or meta-analyses and database management). We expect the apprentice will learn essential skills as well as gain experience necessary for conducting their own projects. This is why an ideal candidate will be someone who plans to undertake a PhD in the future, within the fields of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Behavioural Sciences (i.e. someone with BSc or MSc).

We will provide an allowance to cover accommodation and food (~up to AU$2000 per month). The intern needs to hold a working holiday visa or be an Australian or New Zealand resident. Please read our webpage to see what kind of research we conduct (www.i-deel.org).

If you are passionate about our science and would like to join our team, please contact Shinichi Nakagawa (s.nakagawa@unsw.edu.au) with your CV and one page letter of motivation.

New Publications

In the Media

Recent Completions

Elke T. Vermeulen submitted her PhD Thesis entitled “Diversity of protozoan parasites in a threatened marsupial (Petrogale penicillata) which is part of a conservation program.”

Supervised by Michelle Power

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