Autumn Symposium and Mixer

The value of strong scientific communities and the open exchange of ideas has never been clearer. Within this broader societal context, events such as the Centre for Ecology and Evolution’s Autumn Symposium have added importance for providing a forum for collegial scientific dialogue, intellectual openness, and inclusion.

The CEE Autumn Symposium and Mixer was generously hosted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The event’s setting felt especially resonant in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Robert Dreibelbis, LSHTM’s Associate Dean for Research, opened the meeting by reflecting on the deep connections between ecology, evolution, and public health, and on how ecological principles underpin our understanding of infectious disease dynamics –  contributing to LSHTM's founding goal of using science to improve health and health equity in the UK and globally.

The day was a resounding success, with over 150 attendees from institutions across not only London, but the UK and beyond. We heard from 19 excellent early career researchers, all of whom gave brilliant and inspiring presentations of their research. The work ran across many different study organisms and locations, from diatom diversity in Antarctica to sparrows on Lundy Island. We learnt about world-leading long term ecological data being produced at the Wakehurst Ecosystem Observatory from Robert Barber as well as the outstanding efforts by Pooja Swali to help understand pathogen evolution using ancient DNA.

As well as providing an instant mood-lifter through caffeine, the coffee breaks provided an important opportunity for free conversation, with researchers at all points of their academic careers coming together to discuss ideas, forge new collaborations and combine research efforts. Furthermore, during the lunch session we had a talk from Prof Yannick Wurm about his work with the government funding agency ARIA, where he is aiming to ‘Engineer Ecosystem Resilience’ by funding radical moon-shot ideas that aim to change the way the world works—think along the lines of mRNA vaccines or the internet.

Massive thanks go to Dr Mojca Kristan and the rest of the CEE committee for their role in organising these events; it goes without saying that we are incredibly excited for the annual Darwin Birthday Debate in February.

Scientific societies are now more important than ever, and CEE is fully committed to the aims of open science, inclusivity and public engagement that learned societies represent. As Shalene Singh-Shepherd from the Royal Society highlighted in her presentation, society publishing allows for reinvestment in the scientific community through the provision of grants, fellowships and events that allow science to become more open, accessible and impactful. We would like to extend huge thanks both the Genetics Society and the Royal Society for their continued support of CEE’s mission, without which events like this one would be impossible. Learned societies like these play a vital role in supporting open scientific communities and networks, and in doing so resisting the rise of disinformation and authoritarianism.

Report prepared by Marcus Hicks (PhD at QMUL), with the assistance of Ben Taylor (Postdoc at UCL). Photos courtesy of Karsa Sivendran (BSc at QMUL).

UCL

• Gemma Murray - ‘The evolution of pathogenicity in a member of the pig respiratory microbiota’
• Nancy Bird - ‘Genetic data uncovers historical migrations in people from West and Central Africa’ 

Imperial

• Tom Smith, Imperial - ‘Eco-evolutionary dynamics of microbial community responses’
• Muyao Qi, Imperial - ‘The spatial distribution of ectomycorrhizal fungi in Europe' 

NHM London

• Belen Arias - ‘From the midnight zone to the abyss: what we know about life in the deep sea’
• James Mulqueeney - ‘Deep learning for comprehensive 3D image segmentation and analysis of volumetric changes in planktonic foraminifera’ 

KEW

• Anna Bazzicalupo - ‘Evolution of cross-tolerance to metals in yeast’
• Felix Lim - ‘Building climate-resilient food systems through diversification’ 

RHUL

• Nahema Venceslai - ‘Seed persistence in black grass’
• Lachlan Jones - ‘Nectar chemistry effects on bee parasites’  

KCL

• Emma Moffett - ‘Temperature predicts the somatic growth of ectotherms in the lab but not in the field’
• Michael Berthaume - ‘An evolutionary biomechanics perspective on the evolution of knee sesamoids in primates’ 

ZSL

• Simon Kentworthy - ‘Smartificial Fruits: participation, cognition and social learning of touchscreen tasks by wild desert baboons’
• Claire Duncan - ‘Quantifying and identifying coastal conservation solutions’ 

LSHTM

• Rosie Bridgewater, LSHTM - ‘Exploring the Divergent Microbiomes of Lab-Reared Mosquitoes at LSHTM’ 

QMUL

•  Eugenie “Charley” Yen - ‘Epigenetics for conservation: monitoring thermal stress in endangered sea turtles’
• Roman Arguello - ‘Evolution of Sensory Systems’ 

RVC

• Denis Larkin - ‘Convergent nucleotide evolution and selection in acclimation of wild species and domestic breeds’
• Andrea Gaede - 'Neural specialisations for sensory control of locomotion' 

UCL

• Charlie Outhwaite - 'The interactive effects of land use and climate change on global insect biodiversity'
• Joseph Williamson - 'Too Hot to Handle' 

Imperial

• Anish Banerjee - 'Understanding the drivers of spatiotemporal patterns of the fox and badgers of Silwood Park' 

RVC

• Julian Drewe - 'Climate change and infectious disease epidemiology'
• Androniki Psifidi - 'How genomic selection may improve the interaction between livestock and the environment' 

NHM London

• Patrick Hooper- 'Protist diversity in cyanobacterial mats decreases with latitude across the Canadian Arctic (55-83°N)'
• David Redding - 'Climate change impacts on zoonotic diseases'  

KEW

• Samual Pironon - 'Adapting agriculture to climate change: plant agrodiversity to the rescue'
• Marybel Soto Gomez - 'Genome size is positively correlated with extinction risk in herbaceous angiosperms' 

RHUL

• Cristina Garcia -  'Genetic, phenotypic, and environmental factors driving tree responses to extreme drought events'
• Hana Merchant - 'Local adaptation in South African mole-rats (Cryptomys hoLentotus hoLentotus) populations along an aridity gradient' 

KCL

• Aline Da Silva Cerqueira - 'Climate Change on the North and Northeastern Coasts of Brazil: Challenges and Opportunities for Supporting Biodiversity and Coastal Livelihoods'
• Aaron Le Blanc - 'Constraints, selective pressures, and the convergent evolution of "mammalian enamel": new case studies in fossil and extant lepidosaurs' 

ZSL

• Patricia Brekke - 'Using long-term datasets to understand adaptation in wild, threatened species'  
• Natalie Pettorelli - 'Conservation under rapid climatic changes: the case for rewilding'  

LSHTM

• Ebenezer Foster-Nyarko, - 'Genomic diversity of Escherichia coli from human-habituated monkeys in the Gambia' 

QMUL

• Joanne Littlefair, - 'Answers in the air: monitoring changes in terrestrial biodiversity with environmental DNA'
• Richard Nichols, - 'Adapting to climate change - don't be ridiculous'

QMUL

• Elisabeth Busch-Nentwich, QMUL - ‘Exploring phenotypic robustness during development using zebrafish’ 
• Andrew Leitch, QMUL - ‘Genome downsizing after polyploidy: mechanisms, rates and selection pressures’ 

RVC 

• Masaya Iijima, RVC - ‘Discovery of a Bronze Age crocodylian Hanyusuchus from southern China and its human-induced extinction’ 
• Alice Leavey, RVC - ‘Modelling the effect of different skeletal proportions on hindlimb kinematics in frogs’ 

RHUL

• Elli Leadbeater, RHUL - ‘Ecology dictates the value of memory for foraging bees’ 
• Juri Felix, RHUL - ‘Consequences of climate matching for oak resistance to herbivory’ 

UCL

• Florencia Camus, UCL - ‘Contribution of mitonuclear genomes to local adaptation’ 
• Jason Lynch, UCL - ‘Re-building Reefs through digital visualisation’ 

LSHTM

• Francesc Col, LSHTM - ‘Harnessing bacterial within-host diversity to study short-sighted evolution and adaptation of bacterial pathogens’ 

Imperial

• Mahika K. Dixit, Imperial - ‘Surprising consistency of insect pollinator body-size through time, despite differences in responses among life-history groups’ 

NHM London

• Carla Greco, NHM London - ‘Under the ice: Investigating Antarctic stromatolites using next-generation sequencing’ 
• Christopher Laumer, NHM London - ‘Nanopore transcriptome skimming: a promising strategy for meiofaunal biodiversity assessment’ 

KEW

• Dr Nicola Kühn, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - ‘Belowground traits to cope with Climate Change’ 
• Dr Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - ‘Innovating species identification through next-generation DNA barcoding’ 

ZSL

• Heidi Ma, ZSL - ‘Hainan gibbon conservation in a human landscape – challenges and opportunities’ 
• Donal Smith, ZSL 

LSHTM

• David Allen - 'Understanding virus evolution in the human population' 
• Abbey Page - 'Fathers, grandmothers and siblings: the future of studying cooperative reproduction in humans' 

RVC

• Chris Basu
• Ashleigh Wiseman - 'How to reconstruct hominin locomotion from fossil tracks: a biomechanical approach' 

ZSL

• Monika Bohm - 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Ten years+ of the Sampled Red List Index' 
• James Hansford - 'How did animals go extinct before the Anthropocene?' 

NHM

• Alex Bond - 'The shearwater and the bottlecap: plastics pollution and its effects on wildlife' 
• Bonnie Webster - 'The sex lives of schistosomes; interrelationships of the S. haematobium species group' 

University of Roehampton

• Jessica Bryant - 'Does the early baboon catch the (Guinea) worm? Understanding how baboon ecology contributes to Guinea worm transmission in Ethiopia' 
• Stuart Semple - 'Compression as a universal principle of biological information systems' 

KEW

• Peter Gasson - 'Seeing the wood from the trees – wood inside and out' 
• Juan Viruel - 'From specimen to spoon: squeezing out genomic information to provide food security and inform conservation in yams'

UCL

• Aida Gomez-Robles - 'The evolution of human altriciality and brain plasticity in comparative context' 
• Jasmine Ono - 'Mapping of speciation genes that cause yeast hybrid sterility' 

Imperial

• Peter Graystock - 'Engineering bumblebee microbiomes to increase host tolerance to pesticides' 

RHUL

• Danniella Hodgson - 'The dynamics, interaction and impacts of plastics on the Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland' 
• Debroah Harvey - 'Connecting children with the biodiversity in their school grounds' 

QMUL

• Richard Nichols - 'Geology meets genomics' 
• Elisabetta Versace - 'Where do ideas come from? The chick and the origins of knowledge'