SPEAKER: Dr Steve Morton, Honorary Fellow, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences,
Alice Spring, NT
DATE: Friday, 24th October 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room T3.05 and Warrnambool Campus, Room C1.13

ABSTRACT: A revised set of propositions about ecology in arid Australia is presented, based on research literature since publication of Stafford Smith and Morton (1990).

Fourteen propositions distil our argument that most features of the Australian deserts are explicable in terms of two dominant physical and climatic elements: rainfall variability, leading to extended droughts and occasional flooding rains; and widespread nutrient poverty. Different landscapes within the arid zone show these features to varying degrees, and so it is important to think about different places separately when considering our propositions.

Plant life-histories strongly reflect temporal patterns of soil moisture; because Australian deserts receive more variable rainfall than most others, there is a distinctive spectrum of life-histories. Low levels of phosphorus (together with abundant soil moisture on irregular occasions) favour plants producing a relative excess of carbohydrate (C). In turn, C-rich plant products sometimes lead to fire-prone ecosystems, assemblages dominated by consumers of sap and other C-based products, and abundant detritivores (particularly termites).

Fluctuations in production due to variable rainfall provide openings for consumers with opportunistic life-histories, including inhabitants of extensive but ephemeral rivers and lakes. Most consumer species exhibit some dietary flexibility or utilise more dependable resources; these strategies give rise to greater stability in species dynamics and composition of assemblages than might first be imagined under the variable rainfall regime.

Aboriginal people have had long-standing ecological influence as they accessed resources. For each proposition we suggest the extent to which it is ‘different’, ‘accentuated’ or ‘universal’ in comparison with other deserts of the world, recognising that this categorisation is in need of critical testing. Further tests of each proposition are also suggested to fill the many gaps that still exist in our knowledge of the structure and functioning of Australia’s deserts.

BIO: Steve is an Honorary Fellow with CSIRO in Alice Springs. He was educated at the University of Melbourne before undertaking postdoctoral work at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Sydney.

He worked for some years in the wet-dry tropics of the Top End with the Office of the Supervising Scientist, and then joined CSIRO in Alice Springs to work in the desert environment that has been the major focus of his ecological work.

Subsequently he spent ten years in the leadership of CSIRO as a Chief of Division and member of the Executive Team, working from Canberra and Melbourne. After retirement from full-time employment in 2011 he returned to live in Alice Springs.

From here he serves on a variety of boards and committees relating to environmental and natural resource management and continues to think and write about ecology, mostly to do with the Australian deserts.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Kate Buchanan.

SPEAKER: Dr Matthew Symonds, Marine Biology, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Integrative Ecology (CIE), School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
DATE: Friday, 17th October 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT4 (B3.05) and Warrnambool Campus, Room C1.13

ABSTRACT: Bird bills are iconic structures in evolutionary biology. Evolution in bill morphology has long been known to be associated with foraging and food availability, niche competition and sexual selection. Less well-appreciated is the important role bills play in thermoregulation.

I will discuss evidence that climate predicts bird bill morphology through the pattern known as Allen’s rule (larger extremities in warm climates). Further, I will consider how bill size can mediate behavioural thermoregulation in bird species. Finally, I will present evidence of increases in bill size in the past century concomitant with global warming​

BIO: Matt is senior lecturer in ecology at the Burwood campus of Deakin University. Formerly from the UK, Matt did his undergrad and PhD at the University of Cambridge, with a brief sojourn for masters at University of Nottingham.

Since coming to Australia as a Royal Society Travelling Research Fellow, Matt has done post-docs at University of Melbourne (including as an ARC Australian Postdoc) and at James Cook University.

His research interests are broad and cover insect pheromone evolution, bird macroecology and medicinal plant evolution. However, these interests are broadly united under the banner of using phylogenetic comparative approaches to derive understanding about the evolution of biodiversity.

SPEAKER: Professor Sean Connell, Marine Biology, School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, The University of Adelaide, South Australia
DATE: Friday, 10th October 2014
LOCATION: Warrnambool Campus, Room C.1.13
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room T3.05 and Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207

ABSTRACT: Liberation of resources in the form of nitrogen and carbon is occurring at an unprecedented rate as we feed and fuel the world’s increasing expectations for higher standards of living, population and economic growth.

Whilst there is increasing potential for resources to drive ecosystem change, biologists have been preoccupied with trophic or top-down control (e.g. via fishing and marine parks, ocean pH and warming).

Whilst recognizing the context for strong trophic control, I provide an account by which terrestrial nitrogen and carbon dioxide emissions act as resources that turn ecological subordinates into dominants. The displacement of kelp forests by their competitors is a notable case that may broaden the way we think about ecological change and its management.

BIO: I research the drivers of ecological change and stasis within kelp forests. This work has caused me to work across spatial scales (local to biogeographic), recover lost-baselines and shifted species-distributions (historical ecology), recognize contemporary processes of change and stability (resilience and resistance) through ocean warming and acidification (climate change).

By reconciling controversy among such studies, I sometimes wonder whether we are sufficiently mindful of the importance spatial and temporal context to ecological pattern and process.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Alecia Bellgrov.

SPEAKER: Professor Kurt Gamperl, Ocean Science Centre, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
DATE: Thursday, 25th September 2014
LOCATION: Warrnambool Campus, Room C1.13
TIME: 1:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT11 (B1.20) and Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room DD3.219

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Since completing his PhD in biology at Dalhousie in 1994, Prof Gamperl has studied various aspects of the stress, metabolic, exercise and cardiovascular physiology of vertebrates from fishes to alligators.

However, his most significant contributions have been made in understanding how fishes respond and adapt to challenging environmental conditions such as hypoxia (anoxia), changes in temperature, and temperature extremes.

This research has been used to set water temperature criteria for redband trout (residents of the high desert regions of Oregon and Idaho), and has defined the upper temperature limits of several fish species (e.g. cod, rainbow trout, Atlantic salmon, Arctic charr) used in cage-site aquaculture. Further it has:

1. Shown the critical importance of heart function in determining the upper and lower temperature limits of fishes;
2. Determined how elevated temperatures impact immune function and the capacity of fishes to respond to bacterial and viral pathogens; and
3. Revealed the mechanisms that allow cunner (a north Atlantic wrasse species) to enter metabolic depression (torpor) in winter, and how the ability to depress metabolism impacts their capacity to survive climate change relevant environmental challenges (e.g. hypoxia and high temperatures).

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Luis Afonso.

SPEAKER: Professor Brian Dixon, Department of Biology, University of Waterloo, Canada
DATE: Wednesday, 24th September 2014
LOCATION: Warrnambool Campus, Room B3.03
TIME: 3:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room B2.20 (Blue Room) and Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka5.321

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Since completing his PhD in Biology at Dalhousie in 1993, Prof Dixon has studied various aspects of immunity in many species of fishes and frogs.

One of his most significant contributions have been made in discovering key fish immune system genes and examining how environmental conditions, particularly temperature modulate immune function.

This research has defined the process of antigen presentation in teleost fish. It has also been used to understand population dynamics of several fish species, especially sentinel species for climate change such as Arctic charr and also to improve practices in aquaculture, especially culture of organic Chinook salmon.

Prof Dixon’s research in pesticide effects on frog immunity was used to implement a pesticide ban in the province of Ontario.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Luis Afonso.

SPEAKER: Dr Shaun Cunningham, Centre for Integrative Ecology (CIE), School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
DATE: Friday, 12th September 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room T3.05 and Warrnambool Campus, Room G1.01 (Percy Baxter LT)

ABSTRACT: Ecologists need to develop tools that quantify ecosystem condition over scales that are relevant to species’ persistence and their management. Dieback of floodplain forests is an acute example of how land-use intensification and drying climates are degrading native ecosystems.

Land managers of the Murray-Darling Basin are involved in a large-scale and highly-political effort to restore the resilience of these ecosystems by returning more water to the native floodplain. Regular and robust assessments of these ecosystems are vital to ensure the efficient use of this limited water and to justify its benefits to competing water users.

Shaun has developed such a tool that provides annual assessments of forest condition across the floodplain forests of the whole Murray River. The approach has involved several years of ground surveys, building predictive models using satellite imagery and subsequent validation surveys.

The approach is used annually by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to assess vegetation condition of the Murray, with ongoing research to expand the assessment to all floodplain forests of the Basin. The forest condition assessment has promise as a regional assessment of biodiversity beyond floodplains, showing strong relationships with bird richness and breeding, and plant understorey composition.

BIO: Shaun Cunningham joined the Centre for Integrative Ecology this year as research fellow. He is a forest ecologist who endeavours to quantify pattern and process in native and planted forests, with the aim of better informing their management.

His interests include predicting vegetation condition and extent across landscapes using remote sensing, restoring vegetation and ecological processes in agricultural landscapes, and physiological explanations for plant distribution.

His research has ranged in scale from leaf-level processes to vegetation patterns across river basins. He has studied native systems from heathlands to rainforests, and restoration of native vegetation in agricultural landscapes. He has worked for the Australian National Herbarium, CSIRO Plant Industry, the Bushfire CRC and Monash University.

At Deakin, he is continuing research in the above areas and starting a new project investigating structural and compositional changes in vegetation of floodplain and plains woodlands during the drought and the subsequent wet years.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Natasha Kaukov.

SPEAKER: Prof Martyn Jeggo, Director, Geelong Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases (GCEID), School of Medicine, Faculty of Health, Deakin University
DATE: Friday, 5th September 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room T3.05 and Warrnambool Campus, Room G1.01 (Percy Baxter LT)

ABSTRACT: An examination of the major disease outbreaks over the past few years clearly illustrates that they come as surprises, we have failed to predict them and our response is never adequate. What can we learn from the past, and how can we do things differently to better manage these “surprise events”.

The presentation explores the One Health initiative and suggests that by taking a multi sectorial and multidisciplinary approach may well place us in a better position both to predict and to respond to the challenges of new and emerging diseases. The presentation concludes with identifying the role that the Geelong Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases (GCEID) can play in this risk management approach.

BIO: Professor Martyn Jeggo qualified as veterinary surgeon in the UK in 1972 and after a short four-year spell in general practice and overseas in North Yemen, he undertook research at the UK high containment Pirbright Laboratories.

In 1986 he joined the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of the UN to establish a veterinary laboratory support program. For 18 years he worked within the framework of UN programs of support for animal health in the developing world with research related projects in some 150 countries.

In 2002 he became Director of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory. In 2013 he joined Deakin University Medical School as the Director of the Geelong Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases. He has championed the concept of One Health for the past six years organizing the first International Conference on One Health in Melbourne in 2011. He will chair the Organizing Committee of the 4th International One Health Congress which will again be held in Melbourne in 2016.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Natasha Kaukov.

SPEAKER: Prof Timothy Mousseau, Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Education; Dean of Graduate School (Interim); Professor of Biological Sciences,Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA
DATE: Friday, 15^th August 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 3:30 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT4 (B3.05) and Warrnambool Campus, Room G1.01 (Percy Baxter LT)

ABSTRACT: Click HERE to access abstract   

BIO: Professor Timothy Mousseau received his doctoral degree in 1988 from McGill University and completed a NSERC (Canada) postdoctoral fellowship in population biology at the University of California, Davis.

He joined the Faculty at the University of South Carolina in 1991 and is currently the Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Education, the Dean of the Graduate School (Interim), and a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Since 1999, Professor Mousseau and his collaborators (esp. Dr. Anders Pape Møller, University of Paris-Sud) have explored the ecological and evolutionary consequences of the radioactive contaminants affecting populations of birds, insects and people inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine.

Their research suggests that many species of plants and animals suffer from increased mutational loads as a result of exposure to radionuclides stemming from the Chernobyl disaster. In some species (e.g. the barn swallow, Hirundo rustica), this mutational load has had dramatic consequences for reproduction and survival.

Prof Mousseau’s current research is aimed at elucidating the causes of variation among different species in their apparent sensitivity to radionuclide exposure.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email John Endler.

SPEAKER: Associate Professor David Watson, Associate Professor in Ecology, Institute for Land Water & Society and School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University, NSW
DATE: Friday, 15^st August 2014
LOCATION: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT4 (B3.05)
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207 and Warrnambool Campus, Room G.1.01 (Percy Baxter LT)

ABSTRACT: In this seminar, I review recent advances in understanding the role mistletoes (Loranthaceae) play in woodlands and forests, as well as the factors underlying their inherently patchy distribution.

I draw together findings from several studies into mistletoe seed dispersal, dispelling the “just so” story that mistletoe specialist frugivores are coevolved dispersers and suggesting they are better considered exploitative opportunists.

Building on results of the large-scale removal experiment, I delve deeper into the community-level findings to uncover the underlying mechanisms. Rather than those groups depending on mistletoe nectar or fruit, insectivores were found to exhibit the greatest declines following mistletoe removal.

Indeed, once the response of ground-feeding insectivores is removed, no significant treatment effects persist. This counter-intuitive finding is consistent with the emerging view of mistletoes and other parasitic plants as facilitators, boosting diversity via highly enriched litter-fall.

BIO: David is an ecologist interested in the factors affecting diversity patterns. He has conducted numerous empirical and theoretical studies of the determinants of diversity, ranging from cloud-forests of southern Mexico to arid shrublands in central Australia.

He has a particular interest in mistletoe and has suggested that it operates as a keystone resource in forests throughout the world. Recent projects on Barro Colorado Island, Panama and in Washington state complement ongoing studies in south-eastern Australia.

David was born and grew up in Melbourne, completed a BSc (Hons) degree at Monash University, with a double major in Botany and Zoology, then earned his PhD in ecology at the University of Kansas USA.

He became interested in mistletoes during Honours research in Wimmera, kept an eye out for them during fieldwork for his PhD in southern Mexico and Costa Rica.  He began undertaking research on mistletoes after he joined Charles Sturt University in 2000. He has ongoing studies in eastern and central Australia and central  America, as well as collaborations with researchers in the USA, Canada, Brazil and Europe.

In addition to mistletoe, his research program has three other main themes: developing practical solutions to habitat fragmentation, managing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and devising improved biodiversity survey methods. For the students across the Murray Darling basin, however, he is known simply as “Doctor Dave”.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Euan Ritchie.

SPEAKER: Nicole Baran, Graduate student, Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, New York
TITLE: Organizational effects of vasotocin on early attachment and song learning in the zebra finch
DATE: Friday, 1^st August 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT 4 (B3.05) and Warrnambool Campus, Room B3.03

ABSTRACT: Zebra finches (T. guttata) demonstrate selective affiliation between juvenile offspring and parents which, like affiliation between pair partners, is characterized by proximity, vocal communication and contact behaviors. In addition, they exhibit vocal learning, in which juvenile males learn courtship song through socially-guided feedback from adult tutors.

This research investigates development of affiliative behavior and tests the hypothesis that the nonapeptide arginine vasotocin (AVT, avian homologue of vasopressin) and the V1a receptor subtype (V1aR) play organizational roles prior to fledging in affiliative behavior and species-typical vocal learning.

The results suggest that AVT and the V1aR are involved in the organization of social development, perhaps modifying early attentiveness to social stimuli and attachment leading to downstream differences in learned socially-relevant behaviors.

BIO: Nicole Baran is a 5^th year Ph.D. Candidate studying Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University.

She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago in 2009, where she studied both Economics and Comparative Human Development. She is currently in the lab of Elizabeth Adkins-Regan, where she studies the hormonal and neural mechanisms of avian social behavior from an evolutionary and comparative perspective.

Her current work is focused on reproductive strategies in birds, including pair bonding, extra-pair mating, conspecific brood parasitism, and sex ratio adjustment. She uses an interdisciplinary approach that includes both behavioral neuroscience and computational biology.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Kate Buchanan.

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SPEAKER: Kristina Smiley, Graduate student, Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, New York
TITLE: Prolactin and Parental Care:  An evolutionary perspective on the mechanisms of parental care
DATE: Friday, 1^st August 2014
LOCATION: Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, Room ka4.207
TIME: 2:00 pm
Seminar will also be video linked to the following campuses: Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Room LT 4 (B3.05) and Warrnambool Campus, Room B3.03

ABSTRACT: Parental care is a critical component of fitness that is widespread across vertebrates and takes many diverse forms. Various selection pressures have led to the convergence of parental care across taxa, which provide a unique opportunity to study how neuroendocrine mechanisms can be co-opted for similar behaviors in species with different life histories, ecologies, and reproductive physiologies.

Passerine birds have figured importantly in organismal biology and ecology, but the mechanisms underlying their parental care are not well described. Neuroendocrine systems are known to coordinate both physiology and behavior in response to internal and external cues in order to maximize fitness.

However, little is known about the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying parental care in passerine birds, which precludes us from drawing generalizable conclusions about how similar mechanisms of behavior from a common ancestor can become co-opted for new behaviors, like parental care, in descendant species.

Previous research has shown that prolactin, a conserved peptide hormone, plays an important role in parental care across species of mammals and birds.

My research begins to look at the role of prolactin in the parental care of the zebra finch, a well-suited but understudied model of avian parental care. My dissertation research seeks to understand how prolactin affects zebra finch parental behavior by measuring and manipulating circulating prolactin during parental care and to discover if neural changes occur with parental experience.

BIO: Kristina Smiley is a 4th year Ph.D. Candidate also in the Behavioral & Evolutionary Neuroscience program in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University.

She received her B.S. in Psychology from Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) in 2010 where she studied the role of sex steroids in pair-bonding behavior in the zebra finch. Currently she works in the lab of Elizabeth Adkins-Regan where she studies the neuroendocrine basis of parental care.

Her research interests include how hormones and reproductive experience interact to promote the onset of parental care and how hormones modulate neural circuitries which process sensory input to increase sensitivity towards offspring stimuli during parental care.

Throughout her research she likes to keep an evolutionary perspective, drawing upon comparative data whenever possible to make hypotheses on how these neuroendocrine systems have been adapted for parental care. Her current research project is on the role of the hormone prolactin in parental care behavior in the zebra finch.

For enquiries and appointments with the guest speaker, please email Kate Buchanan.