Biomath Colloquium 17/05/2019

BioMaths Colloquium Series - 2018/19

17 May 2019 - 3pm Zoology Museum

(Department of Biosciences, Singleton Park)

Eco-evolutionary assembly in meta-communities

Dr Miguel Lurgi Rivera

(Department of Biosciences, Swansea University)

from Wallace, Lurgi et al. (2016)

Our BioMaths Colloquium Series continues for the spring term with a seminar by Dr Miguel Lurgi Rivera, from the Department of Biosciences at Swansea University.  Miguel is a theoretical ecologist and lecturer in Biosciences as well as a computer engineer,  broadly interested in community and evolutionary ecology. He is in particular interested in eco-evolutionary mechanisms involved in the assembly of complex ecological networks in meta-community contexts, using empirical data from real complex communities to test theoretical predictions.



Abstract

Understanding the drivers of community assembly poses a great challenge for community ecologists. Ever since Jared Diamond proposed rules for community assembly back in 1975, ecologists have searched for mechanisms behind these rules. Even before then, prominent ecologists such as MacArthur and Elton had realised that ecological interactions played a major role in determining the fate of communities. This research gained momentum during the last 70’s and 80’s, which ended up providing the foundations for what we now know as food web theory and ecological networks. One lesson learned is that the structure of biotic interaction networks can tell us a great deal about the stability and functioning of ecosystems. This structure is hence a major driver of community assembly. We also know that other factors, such as evolution and spatial context, can contribute to shape the communities we see. In this talk, I will combine ecological networks, meta-communities, and evolution via selection to create a modelling framework to better understand the role of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms -and their interplay- in the dynamics of community assembly.

The discussions will continue over tea and coffee after the seminar. 

Hope to see many of you!

For the list of forthcoming seminars, see here

Biosciences Seminar Speaker 16 May 2019

Biosciences Seminar Series - Spring 2019
16 May 2019 - 1pm - Zoology Museum

Methods for modeling among-animal variability in habitat selection studies

Dr John Fieberg

(University of Minnesota, USA)

Photo by Jayne Gallery

Our Biosciences Seminar Series continues for the spring term with a talk by Dr John Fieberg from our College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences - CFANS at the University of Minnesota. John is an Associate Professor of Quantitative Ecology and McKnight Presidential Fellow. He is a Biostatistician and Biomathematician, broadly interested in the application of statistical and mathematical models to problems in ecology and natural resource management. A special focus concerns the analysis of wildlife telemetry data, with application to survival, home range, and habitat selection modelling.

Abstract

Understanding the causes and consequences of among-animal variation in habitat selection is key to addressing many fundamental questions in ecology and evolution. Popular conceptual frameworks used to study habitat selection include resource selection functions (RSFs) and step-selection functions (SSFs) estimated using logistic and conditional logistic regression, respectively. Both frameworks compare environmental covariates associated with locations that animals visit with environmental covariates at a set of locations assumed available to the animal. Conceptually, hierarchical models with animal-specific coefficients could be used to accommodate inter-individual heterogeneity when fitting RSFs or SSFs. A review of the literature suggests, however, that RSFs rarely include animal-specific selection coefficients. Further, straightforward and efficient one-step procedures for fitting SSFs with animal-specific coefficients have until now been lacking. 

We demonstrate simple methods for exploring among-animal variability in habitat selection parameters using models fit to individual animals. We also describe recent research showing how generalized linear mixed effects models, available in most statistical software packages, can be modified to fit hierarchical RSFs and SSFs in a single step. Together, these examples highlight the benefits of having multiple tools in the toolbox, including simple methods for exploratory data analysis and more sophisticated and comprehensive methods for modeling individual and population-level habitat-selection patterns. 

  

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


For the list of forthcoming seminars see here

Biosciences Seminar Speaker 09 May 2019

Biosciences Seminar Series - Spring 2019
09 May 2019 - 1pm - Zoology Museum

Disease spread in times of global change - the importance of community ecology

Dr Konstans Wells

(Swansea University, UK)

Our Biosciences Seminar Series continues for the spring term with a talk by Dr Konstans Wells from our Department of Biosciences at Swansea University. Konstans recently joined our Department - he is an ecologist and a modeller, broadly interested on the consequences of environmental change on biodiversity. He is in particular focussing on wildlife, invasive species and host-parasite interactions, looking at demographic and epidemiological dynamics, species range dynamics and bio-geographic patterns, with the aim to identify key processes for optimizing conservation and pest control efforts and the prevention of disease spread, under different environmental scenarios and policy schemes.

Abstract

Pathogens that are capable of infecting multiple host species play a dominant role in the myriads of infectious diseases affecting humans and animals. But how do parasites actually spread among hosts and spill-over from one species to another? In practice, many of us are well aware that humans share not only a long history of companionship but also a diversity of parasites with dogs, perhaps more than with our closest primate relatives. There seems to be a lack of consensus, however, in how far host-parasite co-evolutionary history versus arising ecological opportunity drives parasite spread. In this seminar I invite discussion of concepts and tools that may help us to tackle such challenge.
  

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


For the list of forthcoming seminars see here

Wallace Coffee Talks - 07 May 2019

Wallace Coffee Talks - Spring 2019 

07 May - 1pm - Zoology Museum

Priscila Fernandes (Swansea University, UK)

Zebrafish as a model for alcohol research

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) has attracted scientific attention in recent years as a promising animal model for biomedical research, including alcohol research. The genetic similarity with humans, the small size, high fecundity and short time development are some of the practical advantages of this species. To be used as a translational model, the species must present similar phenotypical alterations to those of mammals (face validity), the mechanisms behind these alterations should also be similar (constructive validity) and the behavioural and physiological changes promoter (e.g. drugs) should have the same effects in the model and humans (predictive validity). Here, I will show few data demonstrating how zebrafish respond to alcohol and how this species can contribute for the understanding of alcohol effects.

Ben Whittaker (Swansea University, UK)

Shaping sustainable aquaculture: variation in lumpfish body morphometry across populations and between the sexes

Commercial stocks of lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus) are internationally transported and released onto salmon farms, from which they may escape and breed with native populations. Though there are known genetic differences between stocks, the level of phenotypic variation is largely unknown. In this talk, we assess the morphology of lumpfish from different geographic locations to evaluate the consequences of translocation practise in aquaculture. We also assess sexually dimorphic features in lumpfish, identifying traits which aquaculture could use to select individuals to form breeding programmes.

@ba_whittaker

Biosciences Seminar Speaker 25 April 2019

Biosciences Seminar Series - Spring 2019
25 April 2019 - 1pm - Zoology Museum

Weaving worlds: Postcolonial and multispecies politics of plants

Dr Emily O’Gorman

(Macquarie University, Australia)

Photo by Emily O'Gorman

Our Biosciences Seminar Series continues for the spring term with a talk by Dr Emily O’Gorman from the Department of Geography and Planning at Macquarie University in Australia. Emily is an environmental historian with interdisciplinary research interests in the environmental humanities, such as environmental histories of rivers and wetlands; and scientific approaches to weather and climate from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

Abstract

Wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, have been important sites of political engagement and activism for many Aboriginal groups, who seek to care for Country, and strengthen their rights and roles in the management of water and particular sites. This paper engages with contemporary activities by Aboriginal women at three wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin, as they use weaving of sedges and rushes to show both the importance of these places and in ongoing connections to Country that have persisted through British colonisation and up to now. Plants like sedges and rushes hold a postcolonial politics. They have played an important role in, and provide a lens into, the historical and ongoing connections of Aboriginal women with particular places, co-creating and interweaving worlds.  

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


For the list of forthcoming seminars see here

Biomath Colloquium 12/04/2019

BioMaths Colloquium Series - 2018/19

12 April 2019 - 3pm Robert Recorde Room

(Computational Foundry, Bay Campus)

Applications of Hidden Markov Models in Ecology

Prof Byron Morgan

(School of Statistics, University of Kent) 

Our BioMaths Colloquium Series resumes for the spring term with a seminar by Prof Byron Morgan, from the School of Statistics, University of Kent.  Byron is an Emeritus Professor of Statistics and Co-Director of the National Centre for Statistical Ecology (NCSE). He is broadly interested in Applied Statistics, biometry, and statistical ecology, ranging from stochastic models for molecular biology, parameter redundancy in ecological models, to applications of Bayesian methods and population dynamics.




Abstract

Several standard models in common use in Statistical Ecology can be formulated in terms of hidden Markov Models (Zucchini et al, 2016). In this talk we summarise the essentials of hidden Markov modelling, including the forward algorithm, which provides the unifying structure for likelihood construction, and for efficient likelihood optimisation. Different applications require particular modifications, and this is shown through a range of illustrations, involving batch-marked animals in capture recapture, dynamic stochastic models for seasonal insect data, integrated population modelling, modelling population survey data and multi-species indicators.

References:
Cowan , L., Besbeas, P. T., Morgan, B.J.T. and Schwarz, C. (2017) Hidden Markov models for extended batch data, Biometrics, 73, 1321-1331.

Besbeas, P. T. and Morgan, B.J.T. (2018) A general framework for modelling population survey data, in revision.

Besbeas, P. T. and Morgan, B.J.T. (2019) Exact inference for integrated population modeling, Biometrics, in press.

Zucchini, W., MacDonald, I. L. and Longrock, R. (2016) Hidden Markov Models for Time Series: An Introduction using R, Second Edition, Chapman & Hall, CRC press, Boca Raton.

The discussions will continue over tea and coffee after the seminar. 

Hope to see many of you!

For the list of forthcoming seminars, see here

Biosciences Seminar Speaker 11 April 2019

Biosciences Seminar Series - Spring 2019
11 April 2019 - 1pm - Zoology Museum

Adaptation in a changing world: human influences on evolution

Dr Kiyoko Gotanda

(University of Cambridge, UK)

Our Biosciences Seminar Series resumes for the spring term with a talk by Dr Kiyoko Gotanda from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. Kiyoko is an evolutionary and behavioural ecologist, who works at the interface between ecology, evolution and behaviour, with a special interest in understanding the patterns and causes of the origin of biological diversity.

Abstract

Evolutionary biology studies the origins of biodiversity, how it evolved and, importantly, how it is maintained. In today's world, patterns of selection (and therefore evolution) are being altered by humans, strongly influencing the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. Humans can alter evolution and adaptation through a variety of mechanisms. For example, the increase in urbanization (development of villages, towns, and cities) has a strong effect on ecological and evolutionary processes. Another example is the introduction of non-native predators, an impact known to be closely correlated with local extinction events. Here, I present examples of humans altering selective pressures, and what the consequences of this are.  

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


For the list of forthcoming seminars see here