Directed chemical spray of the peppermint stick insect (Megacrania batesii) is induced when predation risk is at its highest
By: Jones, Braxton R., and Matthew W. Bulbert. Journal of Ethology (2019): 1-9. | Find with Google Scholar »
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Dear all,
Lots of good news this week – books, babies and awards finalists!
Quick reminder that all staff (academic & professional) should attend the Respect.Now.Always Training Session for Staff on Tuesday 1-2pm if possible – this is an important part of the department’s culture. And next week will be the Department monthly meeting – don’t forget to put it in your calendar!
Cheers
Michelle
Save the Date
This 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.
Following week 4th – 8th November
Tue 5th: BIOL364 Antimicrobial Resistance Science Fair and BBQ; 12pm – 2pm; Biological Sciences Courtyard.
Tue 5th: Monthly Department meeting; 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
Wed 6th: Department Morning Tea; 10:30-11am, 205B Culloden Rd.
Wed 6th: Department Seminar – Dr Tatiana Soares da Costa, La Trobe University; 1pm – 2pm; 14EAR(E8A)-280 (Biology Tea Room).
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 Events
Nov 18 – MQ Excellence Awards (Academic staff) – register here
Nov 20 – MQ Excellence Awards (Professional staff) – register here
Dec 3rd: Department Formal Exam Meeting followed by End-of-Year Party 
.
Dec 5th: Department Research Retreat for academic staff.
General News and Announcements
Congratulations! Prasanth and Shweta Subramani welcomed their new baby girl, Anika Uma Prasanth (in Prasanth and Shweta’s culture, the surname of the children is the first name of the father) into the world at 11.46pm on October 27th. A Diwali baby! Weight 3kg, Mum and baby girl doing OK.
Congratulations to our Professional Staff Finalists
Prasanth Subramani for the Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Awards for Professional Staff in the category of Innovation and Process Improvement.
Caitlin Kordis for the Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Awards for Professional Staff in the category of Outstanding Service.
The Administration and Outreach Coordinators, Faculty of Science and Engineering team for the Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Awards for Professional Staff in the category of Collaboration and Connection.
All winners will be announced at the Awards ceremony on Nov 20th.
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.
The 5th Frankham et al. book is published
A Practical Guide for Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations by Dick Frankham and his coauthors, Jon Ballou, Kathy Ralls, Mark Eldridge, Michele Dudash, Charlie Fenster, Bob Lacy and Paul Sunnucks has just been published by Oxford University Press (on October 24 in UK and Europe and it will appear in the US on about 23 November). This is a companion to their 2017 book and is designed to enable a paradigm shift in the genetic management of fragmented populations using genetic rescues.
There will be a book launch in Biology on November 20 where there will be flyers offering a 30% discount. The book is available in both paperback and hardback versions.
BIOL364 Antimicrobial Resistance Science Fair and BBQ
November 5, 12-2pm Biology Courtyard.
Come along and participate in activities designed by students in BIOL364 Symbiosis in Health and Disease to communicate the issues of Antimicrobial resistance while enjoying a BBQ lunch. One group has even arranged (in collaboration with the Hospital Pharmacy) for collection of old antibiotics / medications – so if you have any in your cupboard being them along disposal. The students have going to great effort so please try to pop along even in only for 10 or so minutes.
Plant of the Week -click the thumbnails for larger images-
This week Honey Locust – Gleditsia triacanthos
The Honey Locust, Gleditsia triacanthos, is a deciduous tree from North America that produces large, flat pods, up to 20 cm long, that cattle and horses find particularly palatable. Like a number of other large-fruited North American trees, there is evidence that Honey Locust trees were spread by herbivorous megafauna that were eventually wiped out by humans at the end of the last Ice Age.
Photo of pods: Holger Müller [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)]
OPPORTUNITIES
Research on Plant-Pollinator Relationships – opportunities for involvement as student, volunteer or collaborator, with field trips scheduled to Port Macquarie during Nov/Dec 2019 and Jan 2020. If interested, please contact Professor Graham Pyke at <Graham.Pyke@mq.edu.au>.
For more details, please consult this word document
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, 30th October, 2019; 1pm – 2pm. Speaker: Professor Nate Lo, University of Sydney. Title: Why do insect endosymbiont genomes shrink over evolutionary time? Venue: 14EAR-280 (Biology Tea Room). More information on this and all department seminars ON OUR WEBPAGE HERE.
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.
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.
Calling all ecologists, geographers or remote-sensing researchers to attend the x-sensing conference in November!
When: Workshop, 22th Nov – 26th Nov; Conference 27th – 29th Nov
Where: National Marine Science Centre, Coffs Harbour
What: The ‘cross-sensing’ conference aims to unite scientists from diverse fields with industry professionals and experts in artificial intelligence. The week-long meeting is divided into two parts: a 2-day training workshop and a 3-day cross-disciplinary conference centred on a hack day.
Although the meeting has a technical focus, many of the tutorials and the hack-day are designed to appeal to non-coders too. We have some specialists from NVIDIA coming to teach us about their point-and-click machine learning software, which they say can be used by anyone. There will be plenty of technical expertise at the conference and hack-day, but we also need researchers who bring challenges and domain knowledge to define projects.
For more information, please visit http://x-sensing.net or get in touch with Dr Cormac Purcell <cormac.purcell@mq.edu.au>.
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: Panel: What work will humans do in 2050?; 3.00pm: Startup Graveyard; 4.00pm: Panel: What’s the power of storytelling, now and then?; 5.15pm: Panel: Resilience with Women in Engineering.
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
From a single issue of Nature: The Dark Side of Excellence
“Excellent problem”: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02951-4; “We are all complicit in harassment and abuse”: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02944-3; “Coercive Citations”: In Nature, 74: 11 (2019)
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
Cost-effective mitigation strategies to reduce bycatch threats to cetaceans identified using return-on-investment analysis
By: Tulloch, Vivitskaia, Alana Grech, Ian Jonsen, Vanessa Pirotta, and Rob Harcourt. Conservation Biology (2019). | Find with Google Scholar »A novel GIS-based ensemble technique for flood susceptibility mapping using evidential belief function and support vector machine: Brisbane, Australia
By: Tehrany, Mahyat Shafapour, Lalit Kumar, and Farzin Shabani. PeerJ 7 (2019): e7653. | Find with Google Scholar »Ontogenetic colour change signals sexual maturity in a non-territorial damselfly
By: Khan, Md Kawsar, and Marie E. Herberstein. Ethology. | Find with Google Scholar »It’s not all black and white: investigating colour polymorphism in manta rays across Indo-Pacific populations
By: Venables, Stephanie K., Andrea D. Marshall, Elitza S. Germanov, Robert JY Perryman, Ricardo F. Tapilatu, I. Gede Hendrawan, Anna L. Flam, Mike van Keulen, Joseph L. Tomkins, and W. Jason Kennington. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 286, no. 1912 (2019): 20191879. | Find with Google Scholar »Surviving drought: a framework for understanding animal responses to small rain events in the arid zone
By: Maute, Kimberly, Grant C. Hose, Paul Story, C. Michael Bull, and Kristine French. Ecology (2019). | Find with Google Scholar »Sexually dimorphic blue bands are intrasexual aposematic signals in nonterritorial damselflies
By: Khan, Md Kawsar, and Marie E. Herberstein. Animal Behaviour 156 (2019): 21-29. | Find with Google Scholar »Broad-scale movements of juvenile white sharks Carcharodon carcharias in eastern Australia from acoustic and satellite telemetry
By: Bruce, B. D., D. Harasti, K. Lee, C. Gallen, and R. Bradford. Marine Ecology Progress Series 619 (2019): 1-15. | Find with Google Scholar »Evidence for non-random co-occurrences in a white shark aggregation
By: Schilds, Adam, Johann Mourier, Charlie Huveneers, Leila Nazimi, Andrew Fox, and Stephan T. Leu. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 73, no. 10 (2019): 138. | Find with Google Scholar »No evidence for novel weapons: biochemical recognition modulates early ontogenetic processes in native species and invasive acacias
By: Yannelli, Florencia A., Ana Novoa, Paula Lorenzo, Jonatan Rodríguez, and Johannes J. Le Roux. Biological Invasions: 1-14. | Find with Google Scholar »In the Media
Stephan Leu was featured on Medium
Dr Stephan Leu from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured on Medium on how great white sharks may be more social than once thought.
Rick Shine and scientists from the University of New Caledonia were featured on The Guardian Online, New York Post Online, MSNBC Newsweek, Sky News Online, ABC 7 Online, NBC Online, KAKE Online, CNET, MSN Ireland and Eagle Radio Online
Professor Rick Shine from the Department of Biological Sciences and scientists from the University of New Caledonia were featured on The Guardian Online, New York Post Online, MSNBC Newsweek, Sky News Online, ABC 7 Online, NBC Online, KAKE Online, CNET, MSN Ireland and Eagle Radio Online in relation to their study of the sea snake population in the waters off Noumea for more than 15 years. Now, with the help of a volunteer group dubbed “The Fantastic Grandmothers” they have discovered some astonishing results.
Dr Stephan Leu was featured in Newsweek, Phys.org, Sci News, Daily Mail in the UK, and also interviewed by ABC North Coast Radio and 6PR radio from Perth
Dr Stephan Leu from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured in Newsweek, Phys.org, Sci News, Daily Mail in the UK and other media outlets regarding his shark network study.
He was also interviewed by ABC North Coast Radio and 6PR radio from Perth to talk about his shark network study.
Rick Shine was featured in National Geographic
Professor Rick Shine from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured in National Geographic regarding a new approach to protecting the local fauna from cane toads.
Stephan Leu was featured in Asia Times and IFL Science
Dr Stephan Leu from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured in Asia Times and IFL Science, on how great white sharks may be more social than once thought.
Rick Shine and scientists from the University of New Caledonia were featured in Cosmos Magazine
Professor Rick Shine from the Department of Biological Sciences and scientists from the University of New Caledonia were featured in Cosmos Magazine in relation to their study of the sea snake population in the waters off Noumea for more than 15 years. Now, with the help of a volunteer group dubbed “The Fantastic Grandmothers” they have discovered some astonishing results.
Stephan Leu was featured on Newsweek, Daily Mail Australia and 6PR Perth Afternoons
Dr Stephan Leu from the Department of Biological Sciences was featured on Newsweek, Daily Mail Australia and 6PR Perth Afternoons on how great white sharks may be more social than once thought.
Kerstin Bilgmann was interviewed on ABC Radio Brisbane
Dr Kerstin Bilgmann from the Department of Biological Sciences was interviewed on ABC Radio Brisbane about the intelligence of blue whales and killer whales, and who is smarter.
Recent Completions
Ramila Furtado sumitted her PhD Thesis entitled “Unpacking Effects of Multiple Stressors on Estuarine Meiobenthos.”
Supervised by Associate Professor Melanie J. Bishop