More than a dozen members and close associates of the UCL’s Centre for Integrative Anatomy (CIA) will be flying to Cairns, Australia later this month to participate in the International Society for Vertebrate Morphology’s triennial meeting - the 13th to be held, so far. Between them, CIA members will be contributing to at least 15 presentations, papers and posters, and a few will be chairing some of the themed sessions.
The topics covered will be varied and exciting, and diverse: bird (avian) neck evolution, lizard osteoderms (literally, bone/skin: bony deposits or scales in the skin of lizards and many other reptiles); red squirrel diets; frog locomotion; lungfish feeding; body-size in birds; salamander evolution; statistical quantification and categorisation of movement (locomotion); skull shape in ducks and chickens; brain shape in river otters; and lower jaw evolution in amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, to name but a few of the topics on offer.
The presentations will be grouped under various themes, and sessions devoted to each, chaired by an expert in the field. Example themes are: feeding, teeth and jaws; mass extinction and climate change; the rise of mammals; movement; brain evolution and trauma; Paleolithic (2.5 million to 10,000 years ago) evolution & development; hearing, seeing, smelling; fish shapes (morphology) and fins; limbs and pseudo-limbs; the ‘integumentary’ skeleton (i.e. skin, hair, scales, feathers or cuticle); cranial (head-bones) evolution; land-water habitat changes; spines; internal organs (viscera); and ventilation and breathing.
There will also be special sessions, separately dedicated to the legacies of Susan W Herring (‘A Giant in her Field’ - 3 parts) and Walter J. Bock 1933-2022: Evolutionary Biologist, Functional Morphologist and Science Organizer.
Members of the Centre for Integrative Anatomy (CIA), who will be speaking, work in many disciplines, and include: Susan Evans, Professor of Vertebrate Morphology and Palaeontology; Mehran Moazen, Professor of Biomedical Engineering (who is chairing two sessions, including one on the integumentary skeleton); and Phil Cox, Laura Porro (who is chairing the session on water-land-water transitions) and Ryan Felice, all Associate Professors of Anatomy.
The CIA’s work involves collaboration with many from other institutions and associate organisations, such as: museums, e.g., the Natural History Museum in London, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, National Museums Scotland, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, USA, Florida Museum of Natural History, USA; other colleges of London University, e.g., Kings and Imperial; other Universities, e.g., those of Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, York, Guelph, California (UCAL) USA, Midwestern USA, Ohio USA, Tuscon USA and Washington USA; the University of Arizona Health Sciences; Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences; and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, France.