SPEAKER: Associate Professor Martina Doblin, University of Technology
DATE: Friday, 17th April 2015
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka5.303
TIME: 12:00 noon
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood T3.05 and Warrnambool Campus, Room G1.01 (Percy Baxter LT)

ABSTRACT: Adaptation is increasingly being demonstrated as a mechanism that could reduce the negative impacts of global ocean change on marine biota. In variable environments, selection should favor generalists that maintain fitness across a range of conditions. However, costs of adaptation may generate fitness trade-offs and lead to some compromisetween specialization and generalization that maximizes fitness.

But how variable is the environment experienced by microscopic phytoplankton? These organisms are too small to overcome the physical forces of the ocean, so they are transported through hydrodynamic seascapes that are responding differentially to contemporary ocean change.

In this presentation, a Lagrangian framework is utilised to assess the temperature experienced by microbes as they are transported through the global ocean. These thermal trajectories are then used to partition ocean habitats into potential regimes for microbes to adapt to projected warming.

BIO: Martina Doblin is an A/Prof from the University of Technology Sydney. Born in Melbourne, she graduated from Monash University with her honours degree and then worked as an environmental scientist for a year before completing her PhD in Hobart at the University of Tasmania.

After a six and a half year stint in the US she gave up burgers and fries, and returned to Australia. She has been at UTS since 2005.

Appointments with guest speaker may be made via Christa Beckmann