Past Events

BRS Kayla King: Microbial protection and rapid evolution in host-pathogen interactions

host: Tseng Lab Title: Microbial protection and rapid evolution in host-pathogen interactions Abstract: Many animal and plant species harbour microbes in their microbiota that suppress pathogen infection. These ‘protective microbes’ can be a significant component of…

BRS Marco Todesco: UV patterns in wild sunflowers: one gene and two functions.

host: Rieseberg Lab Title: UV patterns in wild sunflowers: one gene and two functions. Abstract: While all sunflowers appear uniformly yellow to the human eye, they display extensive variation for floral ultraviolet (UV) patterns. UV patterns have long been known to be…

BRC Ice Cream Social

BRS: Molecular Ecology prize: Victoria Sork "Evolutionary and conservation genomics of oaks"

host: Loren Rieseberg Abstract: Oaks are an evolutionary and ecological success story yet their ability to respond and adapt to rapid climate change will determine their future success. In the first part of the talk, I will summarize studies of landscape genomics, DNA methylation, and gene…

BRS: Evolution lecture Trevor Price "The distribution of biodiversity across the Himalaya"

host: graduate students (contact Ken Thompson) Abstract: Tropical mountainous regions are exceptionally biodiverse. In this talk, I address causes of species richness across the Himalaya. The entire range lies just north of the tropics but still spans 30% of the world’s climates, …

BRS: Chris Martin "The complex origins of vertebrate adaptive radiation: from adaptive gene flow to fitness landscapes"

host: Dolph Schluter Abstract: Adaptive radiations produce many new species with diverse and often novel ecological niches. How do populations rapidly adapt to novel ecological niches? My talk will explore the myriad factors underlying the evolution of novel trophic specialists in two case…

BRS: Lian Pin Koh "Promises and Pitfalls of Nature-based Climate Solutions"

host: Cole Burton Title: Promises and Pitfalls of Nature-based Climate Solutions Abstract: The protection or restoration of natural ecosystems can contribute to climate mitigation through carbon storage and sequestration. However, there are various social, economic, cultural and political…

BRS: Nadia Singh "Phenotypic plasticity in recombination in Drosophila melanogaster"

host: Judith Mank abstract: Meiotic recombination rate is phenotypic plastic, varying in response to a number of environmental stimuli. Recombination seems particularly plastic in response to stressors, including pathogens, aging, and starvation. Though plastic recombination is pervasive…

BRS: Tadashi Fukami - Chitty lecture "Making sense of messy communities"

host: graduate students (please contact Sam Straus) Abstract: Seeing that ecological communities are messy in the patterns they exhibit in structure and function, some researchers have sought to uncover general principles that govern all communities, while others have focused on describing…

BRS: Loeske Kruuk "Climate change meets quantitative genetics: tales from a long-term bird study”

host: Mike Whitlock