Biosciences Seminar Speaker - 29 January 2015

Biosciences Seminar Series - Winter 2015
29 January 2015 - 12pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace 129)

(Note Change of Time!)

Biodiversity, benthos and bivalves: 

Linking ecological research to coastal management

Dr. Ruth Callaway

(Swansea University, UK)

Our Biosciences Seminar Series resumes for the winter! The first speaker of the series is Dr Ruth Callaway from our Swansea Biosciences Department. Ruth is an applied marine ecologist, expert in Benthic Ecosystems. She carries out her research as member of the SEACAMS group, a group which aims to design strategic development projects to integrate research and business opportunities around the coast of Wales.


Abstract
The marine and coastal environment is under increasing anthropogenic pressure and many natural resources need to be managed. Vulnerable ecosystems are affected by fishing pressure, estuarine fauna is compromised by excess nutrient input and low-lying coastal habitats face drastic changes due to sea level rise. In this seminar I will talk about projects that explore man-made disturbances on benthic marine communities on different spatial and temporal scales: the effect of trawling on North Sea-wide biodiversity patterns, causes of cockle mortality in a local estuary and the consequences of sea level rise for protected marshes in Pembrokeshire. 

The results informed an ecosystem approach to fisheries management, alerted local fisheries officers that not all problems are easily manageable and triggered discussions about long-term objectives for coastal nature conservation. Some of the work was carried out during the SEACAMS project which focuses on applied research. Opportunities for scientists in the Bioscience department to benefit from projects such as SEACAMS will be outlined. 

Hope to see many of you - everyone most welcome to attend!

Image by Ruth Callaway.

BioMaths Colloquia - 05/12/2014

BioMaths Colloquium Series - 2014/15

05 December 2014 - 3pm

Maths Seminar Room (room 224 Talbot Building 2nd floor)

Dynamic models of size-spectra, and exploitation of fish assemblages

Prof Richard Law

(University of York, UK)

Abstract

The size structure of ecological communities in water is often quite different from that on land: primary producers are usually the smallest organisms, and animals the largest.  This talk covers some recent ideas from dynamical systems for describing dynamics of size-structured aquatic assemblages.  These models have, at their core, the transfer of mass from prey to predator that leads to death of the prey and growth in body mass of the predator, and track the components of productivity through aquatic ecosystems.   

Numerical results suggest there are benefits both to conservation and to yield in bringing exploitation of aquatic ecosystems more in line with their natural productivity, so-called 'balanced harvesting'.

Hope to see many of you!

Biosciences Seminar Speaker - 04 December 2014

Biosciences Seminar Series - Autumn 2014
04 December 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace 129)

The energy in the air: 

How aerial currents affect movement paths, costs and interactions in soaring birds

Dr. Emily Shepard

(Swansea University, UK)

Photo: Markus Unsöld / Waldrappteam

Certainly our Swansea Biosciences Department is known worldwide for being one of the leading developers of bio-logging equipment to record animal movements and behaviour, thanks to the Swansea Lab for Animal Movement (SLAM) and our speaker of today, Dr Emily Shepard, is one of the key researchers of the SLAM group for everything that concerns animal flight, especially of birds. Emily's research is however wideranging and includes even participation in technology developments initiatives such as Byte Snap Design UK. If you want to find her, when not in her office you need to travel to the Andes in Argentina, where Emily 'flies' after condors, or you can find her around Swansea Bay catching up with gulls.


Abstract
Understanding how species respond to the physical characteristics of their environments remains a key theme in ecology. But air has arrived late to this particular party. Only recently has it been suggested that the aerial environment should be recognised as 'habitat' at all, and quantifying or visualising the movements of the air remains challenging. 

www.factzoo.com/birds/

Nonetheless, the dynamic nature of the air has important consequences for animals moving through it. I will discuss how air currents affect flight costs, and the strategies that some birds use to compensate for or benefit from this variability. In particular I will focus on two groups of birds with questionable morals when it comes to feeding: vultures and gulls.

Hope to see many of you - everyone most welcome to attend!

from: www.rtpi.org

Biosciences Seminar Speaker - 20 November 2014

Biosciences Seminar Series - Autumn 2014
20 November 2014 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace 129)

How natural enemies shape plant defences

Dr. Lindsay Turnbull

(University of Oxford, UK)

Image from plantscientist.wordpress.com

Ecology as a scientific discipline mainly focussed on plant ecology first. In fact one of the oldest and most prestigious journals, the Journal of Ecology, still only accepts papers on the ecology of plants! Hence, in our seminar series we should cover also plant ecology and this is the week - our speaker is Dr Lindsay Turnbull, member of the Plant Ecology Research Group and Associate Professor at the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University.   

Lindsay is a plant ecologist, widely interested in what generates the large diversity we observe between plants and what consequences this has for the characteristics and dynamics of ecosystems. In her lecture she will focus on plant-herbivore interactions and the costs and benefits of plant defences.


Abstract
Plants are renowned for producing a wide variety of secondary compounds, many of which are associated with defences against herbivorous insects. However, there is wide variation in both the quantity and type of defence compounds produced. 

from: departments.agri.huji.ac.il

Here I describe work on the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which demonstrates the costs of the production of plant secondary compounds called glucosinolates, which are known to be effective against herbivores. I also describe work demonstrating that different aphid species can select for different types of these glucosinolates in a controlled setting, which may explain the variation observed in different chemotypes of Arabidopsis across Europe.

Hope to see many of you - everyone most welcome to attend!

Image from www.plantphysiol.org

Communicating Science - Swansea Mres Video Blogs -- Social behaviour at the level of the genes

Swansea Biosciences MRes Course 

Communicating Science (BIB 700)

Video Abstracts

by Alizėe Mauffrey and Alexander Coles

Video Abstract on the seminar by Dr. Seirian Sumner on social behaviour at the level of the genes (more info on the seminar here).

click here for the video

BioMaths Colloquia - 14/11/2014

BioMaths Colloquium Series - 2014/15
14 November 2014 - 3pm - Maths Seminar Room (room 224 Talbot Building 2nd floor)

Computational and Mathematical Approaches in Cancer Modelling and Treatment Prediction

Dr Gibin Powathil

(Swansea University, UK)

Image provided by Gibin Powathil

For our second BioMaths Colloquium seminar we will host a talk by Dr. Gibin Powathil from Swansea University. Gibin recently joined the Maths Department and is broadly interested in Mathematical Biology and Computational Mathematics, with a special interest in Mathematical Oncology. Specifically, Gibin's research concerns multiscale cancer modelling, modelling anticancer therapies as well as developing applications of imaging techniques in cancer modelling, but extend also to modelling wound healing.

The issues addressed by Gibin's talk this week are especially exciting for the broad aims of the BioMaths series, as understanding how individual differences and individual interactions scale up to the population level is a hot topic also in current research in biosciences, especially in ecology and evolution.

Abstract

Each individual cancer cell within a cancer cell mass is unique, with its own internal cellular pathways and biochemical interactions. These interactions contribute to the functional changes at the cellular and tissue scale, creating a heterogeneous cancer cell population. Multiscale mathematical models incorporating such complex interactions can help in studying cancer progression and serve as an in silico test base for comparing and optimising various multi-modality anticancer treatment protocols such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. 

In this talk, I will consider a hybrid individual cell-based mathematical and computational model, incorporating single-cell based intracellular dynamics, the cell microenvironment and cell-cell interactions to study the growth and progression of cancer cell mass. The model will be then used to study cell-cycle-based tumour heterogeneity and analyse how it contributes to the potential chemotherapeutic drug resistance within a heterogeneous tumour.

Hope to see many of you!

BioMaths Colloquium 2014/15

The BioMaths Colloquium Series 2014/15 has started!

We are excited and proud to have assembled now a great list of speakers for our first full series of the Swansea BioMaths Colloquium Series. The series started at the end of October (see below) and will feature a monthly Feiday afternoon seminar during term time between October 2014 and June 2015, for a total of eight speakers from the UK and abroad (calendar of talks here). 

All seminars will be held at 3pm in the Maths Department (seminar room 224, 2nd floor of the Talbot Building), unless otherwise noted, and will be followed by tea, coffee and biscuits to continue the discussions.

We started with a superb talk by Dr. Jonathan Potts, which generated many interesting questions and discussions:

Towards predictive models of animal movement and space use: a case study of multi-species bird flocks in Amazonia

Dr. Jonathan Potts

(University of Sheffield, UK)

Photo by Billtacular: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/billysbirds/4808308451/sizes/l/

Abstract
Though the movement of inanimate objects can typically be described by well-known physical laws, our knowledge of what governs the movement of animals is comparatively very poor. This is not surprising.  There are myriad factors affecting animal movement, from their desire to eat, mate and avoid predation, to social interactions such as flocking and swarming, to physical limitations to movement. Disentangling these factors, and placing them into predictive models of animal movement, is a formidable challenge.  

In this talk, I will describe some techniques recently developed to help scientists begin to rise to this challenge.  Though the tools are general, I will demonstrate how they have been used to give insight into a particular study system: multi-species flocks of insectivorous birds in the Amazon rainforest.

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This week the series will continue with a talk by Dr. Gibin Powathil from Swansea University on "Computational and Mathematical Approaches in Cancer Modelling and Treatment Prediction" (Abstract here).

Hope to see many of you!