Diving beetle offspring oviposited in amphibian spawn prey on the tadpoles upon hatching
By: Gould, John, Jose Valdez, Simon Clulow, and John Clulow. Biorxiv (2019): 666008. | Find with Google Scholar »
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Dear all,
The academic staff workload model has now been released for comment and feedback. Our department rep on the Faculty workload committee (Linda Beaumont) will run a session on the proposed model on Tuesday lunchtime. All academic staff should come along for the discussion if possible.
And next week at the same time there will be a Respect.Now.Always Training Session for Staff – all professional and academic staff are strongly encouraged to attend (see details below).
Cheers
Michelle
Save the Date
This week 21st – 25th October
Tues 22nd: Academic Staff workload meeting 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Wed 23rd: Department Morning Tea; 10:30-11am, 205B Culloden Rd.
Wed 23rd: Department Seminar – Professor Lin Schwarzkopf, James Cook University; 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Thu 24th: R-Users Group: My laptop is not coping – what do I do now?; 3.30 PM – 5.30 PM; Continuum room (75 Talavera road, room 3114); snacks provided, BYO mug).
Fri 25th: Research Seminar – Professor Jaume Martinez, Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics, Barcelona; 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Following week 28th October – 1st November
Tue 29th: Respect.Now.Always Training Session for Staff; 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Wed 30th: Department Morning Tea; 10.30-11am; (Biology Tea Room).
Wed 30th: Department Seminar – Professor Nate Lo, University of Sydney; 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Thu 31st: Biology Social Club; 5.00pm – 7.00pm; Biology Courtyard.
Weekly Events
Wed: Shut up and Write Sessions; 11.00am – 12.00pm; 6WW(E8C)-212 or 14EAR(E8A)-360A.
Thu: Venture Café; 3–8pm; (map). Find out what is on each week here – https://venturecafesydney.org/
Fri: Writing Workshops with Prof Ken Cheng – to support HDRs and ECRs with scientific writing; 2–4pm; Ken’s office at 205b Culloden Road, G12.
Fri: Behaviour and Evolution Journal Club; Friday at 12:30pm (bring your lunch); 205B Culloden Rd Boardroom.
Weekly Biological Sciences seminar program is here
Future Speakers:
Nov 6th: Dr Tatiana Soares da Costa, La Trobe University.
Future Events
Nov 5th: Monthly Department meeting. 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Dec 3rd: Department Formal Exam Meeting followed by End-of-Year Party 
.
Dec 5th: Department Research Retreat for academic staff.
General News and Announcements
The Conversation Year Book 2019 – An article written by Alessandro Ossola and the Which Plant Where team (Hugh Burley, Leigh Staas, Linda Beaumont, Michelle Leishman, Rachael Gallagher) on the impact of climate change on our urban forests has been chosen for The Conversation Year Book 2019 – 50 Standout articles from Australia’s top thinkers (https://www.mup.com.au/books/the-conversation-yearbook-2019-paperback-softback). Congratulations to the team – it is the only article from Macquarie researchers selected for this year’s yearbook. You can read the article here (http://theconversation.com/our-cities-need-more-trees-but-some-commonly-planted-ones-wont-survive-climate-change-120493)
Tech Staff National Awards 2019 – Do you know a technical staff member that goes above and beyond? Time to nominate them for the 2019 National Awards! Nominate online through a quick and easy form. Link is in the digital flyer below.
The Respect.Now.Always Team is Running a Training Session for the department’s academic and professional staff on Tuesday 29 October 1-2pm in the Biology tearoom. The goal of the session is to help academic and professional staff be aware of what is appropriate behaviour in the workplace, including interactions with students and colleagues, and to be aware of the support & resources available. This is an important aspect of the inclusive and respectful culture that we value. All academic and professional staff should attend unless they have a prior teaching or related commitment.
Please RSVP via the calendar invitation or to Calli Miller by Friday 11th October (for catering purposes).
Plant of the Week -click the thumbnails for larger images-
This week – White Mulberry – Morus alba
Black-fruited mulberries are pretty common round Sydney, both in gardens and as garden escapes. So if they have black fruit, how is it that technically, they are White Mulberries, Morus alba, rather than Black Mulberries, Morus nigra? White Mulberries (Morus alba) originally came from Central and Northern China where they have been cultivated for aeons, particularly for their leaves used in silkworm production.
OPPORTUNITIES
Assistant Professor Position Advertised – The Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School invites applications for an Assistant Professor position. We seek researchers who define and address fundamental and/or applied problems in biology or medicine, and who use quantitative experimental, computational, synthetic and/or theoretical approaches in their work.
The successful candidate will become a member of Harvard University’s Ph.D. Program in Systems, Synthetic and Quantitative Biology, a cross-campus interdisciplinary program that attracts extraordinary graduate students.
The deadline for applications is October 31st, 2019.
For questions, please e-mail Search_SystemsBiology@hms.harvard.edu. For application instructions, and to apply, please go to https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/9257
eFLOWER Summer School Down Under – Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and UNSW, Australia; 1-10 April 2020.
Applications are now open for the eFLOWER Summer School Down Under to be held at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and the University of New South Wales (Australia) from 1 to 10 April 2020. The goal of the eFLOWER Summer School Down Under will be to deliver high-quality training in the modern comparative methods used to study plant macroevolution, while at the same time offering the students the opportunity to contribute to future targets of the eFLOWER project. While the methods are general and applicable to any group of organisms, all of our empirical datasets will be drawn from our recent work on flowering plants. A unique feature of this School will be that the students themselves will participate in the creation of the datasets (floral traits and fossil calibrations) in the RBG’s collaborative database PROTEUS, thereby gaining hands-on experience of the problems and questions associated with compiling data and building real-life datasets for comparative analyses. In doing so, it is hoped to further promote the rapidly evolving field of macroevolution among graduate students in plant sciences, while also conveying our experience in building high-quality datasets.
For all details about this event, please see the RBG’s webpage: https://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/eflowerdownunder.
Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC): Ecology & Conservation Internship Program 2020 – The AWC have recruited interns who fit well with their organisation and it’s activities for many years, and these interns are regularly offered employment positions with AWC post-internship. Applicants are being sought for the 2020 cohort, with applications closing on 10 November 2019. Please see the attached documentation, or the AWC website.
2019-20 Fisheries Scientific Committee Student Research Grant Round Now Open – The Fisheries Scientific Committee (FSC) is now accepting applications for the 2019-20 Student Research Grants Round. The FSC has available $3,000 to fund 1-2 student projects, aimed at filling gaps in research information for threatened or potentially threatened species of fish and marine vegetation in NSW.
How to apply – Visit the FSC website to access the online application form.
Applications close 11.59 pm (AEDT) on Friday 1 November 2019.
SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS
Biological Sciences Seminar – Date/Time: Wednesday, 23rd October, 2019; 1pm – 2pm. Speaker: Professor Lin Schwarzkopf, James Cook University. Title: …And all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth: an exploration of the consequences of terrestriality. Venue: 14EAR-280 (Biology Tea Room). More information on this and all department seminars ON OUR WEBPAGE HERE.
Research Seminar – Date/Time: Friday, 25th October, 2019; 1pm – 2pm. Speaker: Professor Jaume Martinez, Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics, Barcelona. Title: Being tolerant in shaded times: what weeds can teach us. Venue: 14EAR-280 (Biology Tea Room). Jaume is here on sabbatical for 4 months, working with Ian Wright on building links between ecological and “-omic” research. More info about Jaume’s research can be found here: https://www.cragenomica.es/staff/jaume-martinez
Join Macquarie Bushcare Event – Macquarie Uni holds semi-regular bushcare activities on campus. The next event: Thursday 7th November, 2-3:30pm at the Learning Circle. Gloves and tools provided. Please wear appropriate clothing and bring water.
“My laptop is not coping – what do I do now?”
Description: Is your data analysis taking too long? Is your laptop completely unusable while you run your code? Maybe you need some more options! In this workshop we will look at ways of speeding up your computation workloads. This includes identifying opportunities for parallelism and other computing resources available to researchers like yourself that require more bandwidth. The workshop will focus on simple examples using R and will touch on making full use of your personal device and the resources available on campus, through access national compute facilitates and cloud compute options.
Presenter: Richard Miller is a Systems Admin with the Faculty IT team in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. His primary focus is supporting the computation needs of researchers in the Faculty. This ranges from advising researchers on computational approaches, to optimising code, to maintaining on campus compute facilities, through to the high performance computing. Richard can be contacted via OneHelp or directly via <richard.miller@mq.edu.au>.
For more details, visit https://github.com/mqRusers.
Date: Oct 24, 2019. Time: 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM. Venue: Continuum Room (75 Talavera Road, room 3114). Snacks provided, BYO mug.
Writing Boot Camp – Date/Time: Monday 18th- Friday 22nd November; all week. Venue: on campus (TBC). Suitable for: HDR students who have already completed analysis for a manuscript/chapter, and have discussed with the supervisor the intended direction of the work, and have a target journal in mind.
This boot camp is designed to give you a block of time to work on writing. Help (including from your peers) will be available on writing structure, but this is NOT an introduction to writing, NOR will there be help with analysis. The idea is that you arrive with an idea for the manuscript and the analyses done, and that you will write the whole first draft in the week of the Boot Camp.
Space be available for ~12 students, so if you are interested and committed, please contact Simon: <simon.griffith@mq.edu.au>. Some meals will be provided.
Molecular Sciences Seminar – Date/Time: Tuesday, 29th October, 2019; 1pm – 2pm. Speaker: Associate Professor Chris Greening from Monash University.Title: Uncovering the metabolic flexibility of aerobic bacteria: from enzymes to ecosystems. Venue: 4WW 322 Seminar room.
Shut Up and Write Sessions – every Wednesday 11am. It’s pretty simple, we shut up… and we write. Using the pomodoro technique we’ll meet at 11am to write, stop 25 minutes in for a 10 min break, then settle down again for another 25 minutes of writing. You’ll be amazed how productive you can be. More details on the concept here: https://thesiswhisperer.com/shut-up-and-write/
Room will be either 6WW(E8C)-212 or 14EAR(E8A)-360A, email <lizzy.lowe@mq.edu.au> to confirm or with any questions.
All welcome!
Lunchtime Litter Collection – The days may be cooler, but they’re also clear and sunny. Lunchtime is a great time to go for a walk and get some vitamin D! It’s also a great time to join the Biology Litter Collection competition! The next event will be Tuesday 12th November, 1pm. Meet in the Biology courtyard, bring a bucket or bag if you can.
We’ll be holding events throughout the rest of the year, every few weeks. At each event you go out to collect litter, between 1 and 1:30pm. Collections will be assessed at the end of each collection and gold stars awarded accordingly. Event results are tallied at the end of the year with a prize for the best collector.
Event dates: Tues 12th November; Tues 10th December.
Venture Café – Want to know more about innovation, and how to achieve it? Come along to the Venture Cafe, Thursday, 3pm – 8pm, (map). Find out what is on each week here – https://venturecafesydney.org/
This week: 3.00pm: Demo Tables: 24th October Thursday Gathering; 3.00pm: Citizens of Earth; 3.15pm: Innovate Hear: In Conversation with Associate Professor Tara Hamilton; 4.00pm: Office Hours: Rashid Kotwal & Barbra Sauter, Prospecting/Marketing/Selling; 4.15pm: Panel: Creating Impact with the MQU Incubator; 4.30pm: Office Hours: Luke Freeman, Digital Marketing; 5.00pm: Panel: Innovations in Human Capital; 5.45pm: Workshop: Customer Discovery & the Value Proposition Canvas.
Wildlife at the Watering Hole – 3rd Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm @ Botany View Hotel, King St Newtown!
HDR NEWS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Research Enrichment Program (REP) Workshop Series – The Department now has a fully fledged research enrichment program for 2019 – you can find out about upcoming workshops here (click on this PDF). All HDR students are encouraged to attend several of these workshops each year to develop their skills and track record for the post-PhD world. Supervisors please encourage your students!
PhD Students: got a grant? Dept. will co-fund up to $1500 – The Department would like to encourage students to seek external sources of funding, and has a small budget with which to support successful candidates.New limits from 2019:PhD students ONLY: Dept. will match up to $1500 of external (non-MQ) funding ONCE during the student’s candidature.
If you have received a grant (student as chief investigator) and wish to request co-funding, please forward a copy of the award letter to <sharyon.odonnell@mq.edu.au> and <wenjing.wang@mq.edu.au>.
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.
The PWA program is based on the principle of collaborative learning in which a more experienced research student helps you develop stronger academic and research skills. Peer Writing Assistants are not teachers. Rather, they are trained to function as a ‘friendly audience’ or ‘fresh pair of eyes’ to help you gain new perspectives on your writing or research ideas.
Registrations are now open for individual consultation bookings. If you are interested, please go to book in for a 45-minute session with a PWA here.
And:
Writing Workshops – Convened by Ken Cheng, running weekly for most of the year: Fridays 2-4pm in Ken’s office at 205b Culloden Road, G12.
These writing workshops are meant for HDR students and early-career researchers. In these face-to-face encounters, writing at any stage of any genre is welcome, from first draft to final polish, from empirical paper to literature review to popular news story. Ken envisages personal feedback linked perhaps with rounds of revisions on selected passages during the session. The aim is not just to get stuff written, but to write everything well.
Those interested in attending a session should email Ken Cheng <ken.cheng@mq.edu.au> by Wednesday 12:00-noon, preferably with a draft attached of what they are working on and some indication of what they especially need help with.
ADMIN THINGS
The Department’s Annual Report 2018 is now published and available here. It is packed full of news and events and showcases our people and achievements for the year. A cracker of a read! It will be available on the website very soon, so please pass on to your networks, colleagues and friends.
Need to Contact the Biology Admin Team via Email? Please send your email to <fse.bio-adm@mq.edu.au> or drop in and see us. The old google group (sci.bio-adm) email no longer works, if you have this email as a remembered address please delete.
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.
THIS AND THAT
Do You Want a Volunteer? Juana David Santa Beancur is an international Biology student from the University of Caldas, Colombia and is interested in volunteering with us in the areas of Marine Biology and Biodiversity. If you would be interested in hosting him, or would like more information please contact Calli Miller: <calli.miller@mq.edu.au>.
Call for Cystic Fibrosis Christmas Markets Volunteers! Cystic Fibrosis Australia is in need of Volunteers for their Christmas markets on December 5th and 6th at Martin place. Volunteers are needed to sell Raffle tickets/Merchandise and all funds received support Cystic Fibrosis research and advocacy. All Fixed term and continuing staff are eligible to two days community volunteering leave. Such fund raising events are also great for team building. Please email queries or expressions of interest to Prasanth Subramani <prasanth.subramani@mq.edu.au>.
Volunteers CFA_Markets_Flyer CM_20191
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.
- Please write in third person. The information is coming from the Newsletter, not directly from you.
- Do not use fancy text formatting. Bold heading, normal text, and only italics or bold to highlight. No font size changes will make it through, sorry.
- If sending via email, set your email output to basic. HTML output will add all sort of formatting that will have to be removed before your article can go into the newsletter.
- Keep your submission short and direct (two paragraphs) and if possible provide a document, email or link where readers can get more information. Any long submissions will be cropped.
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.
New Publications
Reviews and syntheses: Turning the challenges of partitioning ecosystem evaporation and transpiration into opportunities
By: Stoy, P.C., El-Madany, T., Fisher, J.B., Gentine, P., Gerken, T., Good, S.P., Liu, S., Miralles, D.G., Perez-Priego, O., Skaggs, T.H. and Wohlfahrt, G., 2019. Biogeosciences Discussions, 10. | Find with Google Scholar »Comparison of Gel Larval Diet With Traditional Lucerne Chaff and Carrot Solid Diets for Rearing of Queensland Fruit Fly (Diptera: Tephritidae)
By: Mainali, Bishwo P., Tahereh Moadeli, Fleur Ponton, and Phillip W. Taylor. Journal of economic entomology (2019). | Find with Google Scholar »Salt-Treated Roots of Oryza australiensis Seedlings are Enriched with Proteins Involved in Energetics and Transport
By: Yichie, Yoav, Mafruha T. Hasan, Peri A. Tobias, Dana Pascovici, Hugh D. Goold, Steven C. Van Sluyter, Thomas H. Roberts, and Brian J. Atwell. Proteomics (2019): 1900175. | Find with Google Scholar »Next-Generation Sequencing reveals relationship between the larval microbiome and food substrate in the polyphagous Queensland fruit fly
By: Majumder, Rajib, Brodie Sutcliffe, Phillip W. Taylor, and Toni A. Chapman. Scientific reports 9, no. 1 (2019): 1-12. | Find with Google Scholar »Spinal arthritis in invasive cane toads is linked to rate of dispersal as well as to latitude
By: Brown, Gregory P., Lin Schwarzkopf, Ross A. Alford, Deborah Bower, and Richard Shine. Scientific reports 9, no. 1 (2019): 1-4. | Find with Google Scholar »Shelly fauna from the Cambrian (Miaolingian, Guzhangian) Shannon Formation and the SPICE event in the Amadeus Basin, Northern Territory
By: Smith, Patrick M., Glenn A. Brock, and John R. Paterson. Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology (2019): 1-24. | Find with Google Scholar »In the Media
Georgia Ward-Fear was featured on NITV
Dr Georgia Ward-Fear from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured on NITV regarding a project using aversion therapy to protect native wildlife from cane toads.
Kerstin Bilgmann was interviewed on ABC Radio Brisbane Weekends
Dr Kerstin Bilgmann from the Department of Biological Sciences was interviewed on ABC Radio Brisbane Weekends about whether a blue whale or an orca is more intelligent.
Vanessa Pirotta was interviewed on Triple J Hack
Dr Vanessa Pirotta from the Department of Biological Sciences was interviewed on Triple J Hack about collecting dolphin snot with a drone
Culum Brown was featured in the Daily Mail
Professor Culum Brown from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured in the Daily Mail regarding a sea hare which was found washed up on a beach.
Georgia Ward-Fear was featured on ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast and 2GB Ben Fordham Live
Dr Georgia Ward-Fear from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured on ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast and 2GB Ben Fordham Live regarding a project using aversion therapy to protect native wildlife from cane toads.
Vanessa Pirotta was interviewed on ABC Pilbara Statewide Drive
Dr Vanessa Pirotta from the Department of Biological Sciences was interviewed on ABC Pilbara Statewide Drive about collecting dolphin snot with a drone.
Georgia Ward-Fear was featured in The Australian, The West Australian and syndicated publications, and on Channel 10 News
Dr Georgia Ward-Fear from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured in The Australian, The West Australian and syndicated publications, and on Channel 10 News regarding a project using aversion therapy to protect native wildlife from cane toads.