Category: Seminars and Talks

Public Lecture:

Title: “Environmental biodiversity, human microbiota and allergy”
Time: Wednesday, April 25, 4:10 to 5:30 pm

Place: 1005 Genome

Evolution & Ecology Seminar:

Title: “Eco-evolutionary spatial dynamics”
Time: Thursday, April 26, 4:10 to 5:30 pm

Place: 1003 Giedt

Background:

Professor Hanski was awarded the Crafoord Prize in Biosciences by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2011 “for his pioneering studies on how spatial variation affects the dynamics of animal and plant populations”. He has established himself, in his more than 30-year career, as one of the world´s most eminent ecologists for developing a range of new analytical methods and mathematical models in ecology. Today, these are widely used to help scientists investigate how animal and plant species are affected when their habitats undergo splitting owing, for example, to urbanization, deforestation and climate change. Further, Hanski is recognized as a tireless advocate of the translational application of his research to public issues involving nature and biodiversity through his popular writings and public speaking. Among his many other honors, he is an elected Fellow of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (UK), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences (US).

DEPARTMENT OF EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY

RECRUITMENT SEMINAR

EVOLUTION OF ORGANISMAL DIVERSITY

Luke Harmon

Assistant Professor

Department of Biological Sciences

University of Idaho

“Detecting the signature of species interactions in the tree of life”

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

1:10pm

1022 Life Sciences Building

Faculty Host: Professor Michael Turelli, Department of Evolution and Ecology

Harmon Seminar Flyer.doc

Genetics Seminar

“The molecular diversity of adaptive convergence in E. Coli”
Speaker: Dr. Brandon S. Gaut

University of California, Irvine | Professor and Chair, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Monday, April 9, 2012
4:10 PM

1022 Life Sciences

Host: Jeffrey Ross- Ibarra

Spring 2012 schedule for the Ecology & Evolution seminar series, ECL 296 (CRN 70181) / PBG 292 (CRN 44948). Seminars will be held each Thursday, 4:10-5:30PM in 1003 Giedt Hall.

We’re still waiting for one title and will send an updated flier as soon as it’s received. In the interim, can you please share this information with your students and anyone else who may be interested.

The most current listing of speakers and titles will be posted at http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/EcologyEvolutionSeminars.aspx.

EESeminar-Spring2012.pdf

"Protein Structural, Biophysical, and Genomic Underpinnings of Protein
Sequence Evolution"
David Liberles (U Wyoming)

Common models for amino acid substitution assume that each site
evolves independently according to average properties in the absence
of a genomic, protein structural or functional context. Two
characterizations of amino acid substitution will be presented. One
approach extends a population genetic model to inter-specific genomic
data and a second approach evaluates the effects of selection for
protein folding and protein-protein interaction on sequence evolution.
Several take home lessons include the importance of considering
linkage independent of protein structure, the importance of negative
pleiotropy (or not statements in folding and binding), and the nature
of the co-evolution of sites and how it links standard substitution
models with covarion models when binding function is conserved and
when it changes.

West Coast USA: 13:00 (01:00 PM) on Wednesday, March 28
East Coast USA: 16:00 (04:00 PM) on Wednesday, March 28
England: 21:00 (09:00 PM) on Wednesday, March 28
France: 22:00 (10:00 PM) on Wednesday, March 28
Japan: 05:00 (05:00 AM) on Thursday, March 29
New Zealand: 09:00 (09:00 AM) on Thursday, March 29

http://phyloseminar.org/

This week’s Animal Behavior Graduate Group seminar (last of the quarter):

Dr. Maxine Zylberberg

California Academy of Sciences

ABGG Exit Seminar: Disease Defense Strategies: Linking Behavior, Immune Function and Disease Ecology in Galápagos Finches and House Finches

Friday, March 16, 12:10 in 6 Olson Hall

Coffee and cookies will be available

From Maxine’s website:

Research Interests: I take a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of disease ecology, drawing from the fields of ethology, behavioral ecology, and immunology to inform my study of disease dynamics in wild bird populations. I am particularly interested in how host behavior at both the individual and group level affects disease dynamics across a variety of geographical and temporal scales, from seasonal disease dynamics, to small and large scale geographic variation in disease prevalence, to evolution of pathogen virulence. My dissertation work focused on the ecology of avian pox in Galapagos finches, in particular annual variation in prevalence and recovery rates, and the importance of both behavior and immunology as underlying drivers of disease dynamics. In addition, I used house finches as a model system to study the relationship between individual behavior and immune function in captivity. I have participated in a number of collaborative projects in the fields of disease ecology and conservation, examining seasonal variation in the physiology of a nomadic species (red crossbills) and parasite load, the ecological correlates of long term variation in malarial parasites of mountain white-crowned sparrows, the inclusion of local experts in biological research, and best methods in conservation management practices.

Publications:

Wang D, Coscoy L, Zylberberg M, Avila PC, Boushey HA, Ganem D, DeRisi JL. Microarray-based detection and genotyping of viral pathogens. (2002) Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 99(24), 15687-92

Cornelius J. M.; Zylberberg M.; Breuner C. W.; et al. 2006 Reproductive status and hematozoan parasite load in the opportunistically breeding and nomadic red crossbill, Loxia curvirostra. Integrative and Comparative Biology, Volume: 46: E182-E182

Cornelius J. M.; Zylberberg M.; Breuner C. W.; et al. 2009. Stress physiology and parasite burden differ during winter and summer breeding in a north-temperate zone temporal opportunist, the red crossbill Loxia curvirostra Integrative and Comparative Biology, 49: E37-E37

Elbroch, L., Mwampamba, T., Santos, M., Zylberberg, M., Liebenberg, L., Minye, J.,Mosser, C.,Reddy, E. 2011. The value, limitations and challenges of employing local experts in conservation research. Conservation Biology, 25: 1195-1202

Santos, M., Zylberberg, M., Reddy, E. Testing for conservation transferability in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. (submitted) Biological Conservation

Deiner, K., Forrester, T.,Grof-Tisza, P., Santos, M. J., Souza, L., Wilkerson, M. L., Zylberberg, M., Schwartz, M. W. Conservation management frameworks: the what, where and how of managing biodiversity. (submitted). Journal of Environmental Management

evol_flyer.pdf

From Angus Chandler:

Next week’s Evolution and Ecology seminar speaker is Dr. Misha Angrist from Duke University. Misha is invited as part of the "Big Read: Open Access Science" partnership. In addition to his academic talk during the usual EVE seminar spot (Thursday, March 8th at 4:10 in 2 Wellman), he will also be speaking at the Davis public library on Wednesday March 7th at 7:30 pm. More information can be found here: http://sciencenovels.wordpress.com/

Misha’s EVE talk is entitled:

"To Put Away Childish Things: The Burgeoning Rebellion of Human Research Participants”

We continue to argue about who should have access to our biological samples and data and the degree to which openness with them will lead to all sorts of bad things. I would like to re-frame the discussion and ask a different set of questions: What are the opportunity costs to research participants, the research enterprise, and society of an insistence upon biological anonymity and business as usual? What do we lose by holding fast to genomic exceptionalism in an age of cheap sequencing and social media? What can we learn from the experiences of those who have opted to eat from the tree of knowledge?

You are invited to:

Department of Statistics

Graduate Group in Biostatistics

University of California, Davis

STATISTICS COLLOQUIUM

Thursday, March 1st, 2012 at 4.10pm, MSB 1147 (Colloquium Room)

Refreshments: 3.30pm, MSB 1147 (Colloquium Room)

Speaker: Bruce Rannala (Genome Center, UC Davis)

Title: A Bayesian Approach to Species Delimitation

Abstract: Taxonomy is an ancient subject aimed at classifying organisms according to species or higher level groupings. Morphological (physical) features have been used to identify species for centuries. However, some taxonomic groups show great morphological similarities despite their ancient relatedness. This has led to the notion of a "cryptic" species. Recently, there has been much interest in the identification of cryptic species using only genomic sequences. I will provide an overview of a recently developed method that uses a combination of population genetic modeling, phylogenetic inference theory and Bayesian reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo to assign posterior probabilities to particular species delimitations. Examples will be presented analyzing sequence data for primates and lizards.

http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/seminar-030112-rannala

Dr. Stephen Kowalczykowsk

“So, How Does RecA Find Homologous DNA Sequences?”

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

4:10pm

1022 Life Sciences