College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series 29th July 2014

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series - Summer 2014 

28th July 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace)

Speaker 1: Brenda Tysse

Seeing the Unseen: Accelerometry revealing human biology secrets

Abstract- pending

Speaker 2: Carly Manuel

How stress influences aggression in the insect pathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae 

Abstract

Fungal growth under stress conditions have been known to influence both fungal virulence and phenotypic traits. Conidia of the entomopathogenic fungi metarhizium anisopliae were exposed to a number of stress conditions and then examined for germination speed, virulence to insect host (Galleria mellonella, Greater wax moth larvae) and enzymatic activity as a response to stress. Fungal conidia were produced on a nutritive medium, under non-stress conditions (Sabouraud dextrose agar (SDA)) or under stress conditions: Osmotic, SDA supplemented with potassium chloride, Oxidative: UV stress, heat shock (heat treatment of conidia on SDA at 40°C, 1hr) and nutritive (minimal media with no carbon source). Conidia were most virulent on day 4, with the starvation stress medium having the fastest germination rates. In addition, conidia exposed to UV stress, had an improved stress management than other stress conditions, which could indicate enzymes involved in stress management may become impaired when exposed to other stress conditions.

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series 22nd July 2014

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series - Summer 2014 

22nd July 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace)

Chemical Ecology, Olfaction and Bio-rational Insect Pest Management

Dr. Zayed Saud Abdullah

(PhD student, Swansea University, UK)

Zayed has just graduated from his PhD at Swansea University under the supervision of Dr. Tariq Butt. He has a background in Genetics, undertaking a BSc at Swansea before beginning his PhD and he is also an entrepreneur. Zayed's insect trap, the Biofeeder™, earned a place in the finals of the 2014 Innovact Awards. The Biofeeder™ exterminates flying insects, including ones that transmit or vector diseases of both humans and animals and uses these insects as supplementary protein rich fish food. The project aims to reduce disease and increase fish stocks in some of the world’s most economically deprived regions.

Insects utilize olfactory cues for many essential processes. Behavioural responses that result from these cues are either innate or learnt. Understanding an insect’s chemical ecology allows for the design and implementation of bio-rational pest management strategies as well as more efficient monitoring tools. Using prior research on thrips as a case study, the various steps involved in elucidating olfactory cues and relevant considerations are discussed. Various thysanopteran species from divergent families show a similar feeding response to pollen, a highly nutritious but non-essential food source. Furthermore, ancient fossilized thrips have been found with intact Mesozoic gymnosperm pollen suggesting that gymnosperm host utilization in the order evolved long before the radiation of angiosperms, plants which most extant thrips species utilize as hosts. Roles of specific olfactory cues have been implicated in pollen locating within the few gymnosperm specialists, but not in angiosperm utilizing thrips that are known to perceive gymnosperm pollen odour. The study demonstrates how fossil record analysis can aid in explaining responses of extant species to chemicals that would otherwise seem peculiar to their ecology, giving better insight into the evolutionary forces that shape insect olfactory systems.

Science Club Series - 17 July 2014

Biosciences Science ClubSeries - Summer 2014
17 July 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace 129)

Ancient DNA sequencing of 5,000 year old seeds from Armenia - investigating the agricultural plant biology in the fertile crescent

Dr. Jimmy Breen

(The University of Adelaide, Australia)

Ever heard of the Fertile Crescent? That's a region in the Middle East, where the civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin began! And today we will have a visitor from Australia, Dr. Jimmy Breen from the University of Adelaide, who will present us some fascinating new insights obtained from applying novel DNA techniques to ancient seeds from a rather unique archeological site. 


Abstract

The fertile crescent region of the near east is an important region in ancient plant and animal cultivation and domestication. In this talk I introduce a uniquely preserved archaeological site in Armenia and present recent next-generation sequencing data from late chalcolithic seed material.

Everyone most welcome, students included!

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series 15th July 2014

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series - Spring 2014 

15th July 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace)

Scaling Biodiversity - Ecosystem Function Relationships

Talk 1

Tom Fairchild

(PhD student, Swansea University, UK)

Tom is a first year PhD student at Swansea University under the supervision of Dr. John Griffin and Dr. Mike Fowler. He undertook a 4 year masters degree at Bangor University in Oceanography,  with a 1 year research project focusing on how physical seabed features, sediment types and how current profiles can be used as a predictor of epibenthic species communities. 
Tom opted to take an MSc in Marine Environmental Protection at Bangor where he also undertook free-lance work on the eradication of the invasive sea squirt Didemnum vexillum on behalf of the (then) Countryside Council for Wales. After this, Tom was offered a position with the Welsh Government, employed as the scientific officer for South Wales in the Marine and Fisheries department, leaving only to pursue his PhD here at Swansea. 

Biodiversity, in many different forms, is recognised as being the driving force behind ecosystem functions,  however there is a great deal of debate on how different aspects of biodiversity, physical heterogeneity and "scale" affect the biodiversity  - ecosystem function relationship (BEF). There are growing bodies of work on both the differences in the way we consider "biodiversity" and also as to how heterogeneity affects BEF relationships, but whilst scale is expected to be an important manipulator of BEF relationships it is rarely explicitly examined.

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series 8th July 2014

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series - Spring 2014 

8th July 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace)

Effects of artificial infection of juvenile edible crabs, Cancer pagurus with the parasitic dinoflagellate, Hematodinium sp.

Amanda Smith

(PhD student, Swansea University, UK)

Amanda is a third year PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Rowley and Dr. Dan Eastwood. Amanda studied Marine Biology here at Swansea for her undergraduate dregree before completing an MRes in Aquaculture and Fisheries, which ultimately lead to this PhD. 

Parasitic dinoflagellates of the genus, Hematodinium, are thought to be significant pathogens of a wide range of crustaceans.  Much is known of the ecology and effects of this disease on the sustainability of crustacean populations but significantly less is known about the mode of transmission and fate of infected animals. Attempts have been made to transmit the disease under aquarium conditions to several species of crabs resulting in a great deal of variation in mortality levels and the timescale of disease progression. To determine if Hematodinium infections are significant drivers of mortality in juvenile edible crabs (Cancer pagurus), crabs were injected with either 1 x 10⁵ Hematodinium trophonts from an infected animal or sterile saline. Crabs were bled every four weeks to determine the progression of infection and its effects on the numbers of circulating haemocytes. Thirty three percent of the Hematodinium-injected crabs became infected and mortality occurred between 93 and 378 days post-challenge. Infected crabs appeared to moult less frequently than their uninfected counterparts but mortality did not appear to be directly caused by Hematodinium, as there was no significant difference in the mean time to death between infected and uninfected crabs. Both Hematodiunium-infected and uninfected crabs exhibited infections by a number of other disease causing agents including haplosporidium-like parasites, fungi and bacteria. These appeared to be key drivers of the mortality observed. These studies, albeit carried out on small cohorts of edible crabs, imply that Hematodinium is not a driver of host mortality at least under aquarium conditions. 

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series 1st July 2014

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series - Spring 2014 

1st July 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace)

Imagining the future: people, environment and social change

Anna Pigott

(PhD student, Swansea University, UK)

Anna is a first year PhD student as a human geographer working on environmental issues, supervised by Professor David Clarke and Dr Amanda Rogers.  She came to Swansea in 2011 to complete an MSc in Environmental Dynamics and Climate Change, which led to an interest in social dimensions of environmental issues...and to this PhD!

Current anxieties about resource use, climate change, land degradation and species loss (to name just a few environmental issues) pose unprecedented questions about our responsibilities toward future generations, of where we want to get to and how to get there.  Change is deemed necessary, but is difficult to achieve. It is increasingly argued that the imagination of the future can play an important role in social and political change, and yet it is given little reflexive attention in everyday life.   

The concept of imagination can be used in a geographical sense to understand how unifying or dominant ideas about our relationship with the world are shared, negotiated, consolidated, and reproduced in society – in other words, how 'habits of mind' are formed.  In light of this, the imagination of the future matters because it is part of understanding how possible futures are pre-experienced and set in motion, and how they influence our responses to environmental issues in the present.

Some key questions, then, are:  how is the future imagined and represented in the public sphere, and how does this relate to people's engagement with global environmental issues? This project has an empirical focus on Wales because the country’s strong political stance on the environment - and its emphasis on ‘the future’ as a means to rally support (the ‘Future Generations Bill’ will be introduced in summer, 2014) - provides a novel opportunity to explore relationships between representation, political rhetoric, and social change.  

Oceanic Influences on the Melt Rates of Marine-Terminating Glaciers in South East Greenland

Alistair Everett

(PhD student, Swansea University, UK)

 Alistair is a second year PhD student in the Glaciology Group, supervised by Tavi Murray and Ian Rutt. He graduated from Swansea in 2011 from his undergraduate degree (MEng) in Civil Engineering, followed by 18 months working as a civil engineer.
Alistair decided that particular area of engineering wasn’t for him, so took a chance on a PhD and hasn't looked back since! During his PhD, I developed a strong interest in the interactions of ice sheets and the oceans as well as the mechanics of how glacier actually work.

Recent synchronous acceleration, thinning and retreat of tidewater glaciers in South East Greenland has been linked to changes in the properties of ocean currents around the coastline. However, calculating rates of submarine melt to a reasonable degree of accuracy has proved difficult due to the many variables involved. A number of models have been developed in order to do this, but as yet there has been limited validation of these models against field data. This is primarily due to the inaccessibility of the plumes and the expenses required in gathering such data. I use Fluidity, an open-source finite element fluid dynamics code, to build a small scale model of a plume of subglacial discharge at an idealised ice front. The model is designed to be comparable to the limited field data which is available. Once validated, the model can be used to infer constraints on the outlet properties of the subglacial discharge, and hence improve the accuracy of melt rate calculations.

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series 24th June 2014

College of Science Postgraduate Seminar Series - Spring 2014 24th June 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace)

Phenotypic mismatch in hatchery-reared Atlantic salmon stocked in the wild

Rebecca Stringwell

(PhD student, Swansea University, UK)

Becky is a third year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Carlos Garcia De Leaniz and Professor Rory Wilson, studying maternal effects and genetic diversity in juvenile Salmonids reared for conservation. 
After attending the University of Hull to study Marine and Freshwater Biology,
Becky came to Swansea in 2007 for an MSc in Aquaculture and the Environment before embarking upon her PhD in 2011. 

The phenotype of fish can diverge greatly in captivity, and this may affect post-release survival. Changes in body shape, fluctuating asymmetry (FA), and crypsis were compared among Atlantic salmon fry kept as controls in captivity and those released and subsequently recaptured in the wild. Hatchery fish that survived in the wild became more streamlined, cryptic and displayed a much lower incidence of asymmetric individuals than control fish kept in captivity.