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CBER External Seminar - Professor Christine Miller, University of Florida
18 May 2023, 12:00 pm–1:00 pm
Title: 'The structure and diversification of sexually selected weapons'
Event Information
Open to
- UCL staff | UCL students | UCL alumni
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Amy Godfrey
Location
-
G01 Lankester LTMedawar Building---
Abstract: Sexually selected weapons, such as the antlers of deer, claws of crabs, and tusks of beaked whales, are strikingly diverse across taxa, within groups of closely related species, and even within a species. In this talk, I will describe three ways my research group has advanced understanding of the expression and evolution of weapons. We focus on the leaf-footed cactus bugs, an insect superfamily exhibiting highly diverse hind-leg weapons.
Our recent findings include:
(1) High lability and correlations between weapon components across the phylogeny, suggesting constraints in weapon evolution or a coordinated function of components during battle.
(2) Trade-offs between the growth of hind leg weapons and sperm production.
(3) Nutrition can severely compromise the injury resistance of insect weapons even during adulthood via changes in the thickness of the endocuticle.
About the Speaker
Professor Christine Miller
Associate Professor - Entomology and Nematology at University of Florida
Christine W. Miller is an Associate Professor in the Entomology and Nematology Department at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT in 1998 and a Ph.D. in Organismal Biology and Ecology from the University of Montana in 2007. Christine works on the evolution of morphology and behavior, particularly in the field of sexual selection. She uses insects to understand the fundamentals of why animals do what they do and are shaped the way they are shaped. Some of her recent honors and awards include a $1.2M award (2022-2026) from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the NSF CAREER Award (2016-2022), the National Excellence in College and University Teaching Award from the USDA (2017), the University of Florida College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Undergraduate Teacher of the Year Award (2018), and she was recognized as an Honorary Term Professor by the University of Florida twice, in 2016 and 2019. In the 2022-2023 academic year, Christine is on sabbatical at the University of Cambridge.
More about Professor Christine Miller