Wallace Coffee Talks - 13 August 2019

Wallace Coffee Talks - Summer 2019 

13 August - 1pm - Zoology Museum

Amanda Fry (Swansea University, UK)

Effects of recent social context on cortisol responses in three-spined stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Interactions with other individuals occur frequently within groups of animals and can influence individuals’ hormonal responses. When exposed to new, potentially stressful environments, an individual’s stress response can be activated; and interactions with conspecifics give us the opportunity to explore the potential bidirectional influence of both partners’ physiological stress response (i.e. ‘coregulation’). Current research into cortisol coregulation, however, usually involves familiar (or even closely related) individuals and it remains unknown whether familiarity is required for coregulation to occur. In this talk I will discuss how the recent social context (house solitarily and tested with unfamiliar partner; housed socially and tested with either a familiar or unfamiliar partner) affected changes in waterborne cortisol concentrations in response to a novel (potentially stressful) environment in three-spined stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) dyads.

@AmandaFry27

Anna Anschuetz (Swansea University, UK)

Mixotrophy: Why we need a change of perspective on marine plankton

For over a century marine plankton and the food web therein have been largely viewed as a clean dichotomy between autotrophs and heterotrophs. A view that is mostly inspired by the food webs that we find on land and are divided between plants and animals. In terrestrial ecosystems, mixotrophs that can be both phototroph and heterotroph like the venus fly trap seem to be rare curiosities, which are at most mentioned as a side note and usually don’t find their way in to food web models. But is this also true for marine ecosystems and if not, what are the implications?

Mixotroph.org