2019

June 11th: Lynn Govaert: "Eco-evolutionary signatures in space/communities"

In both time and space, the observed differentiation in trait values among populations and communities can be the result of interactions between non-evolutionary and evolutionary  processes. However, the tools developed so far to quantify ecological and evolutionary contributions to trait change are implicitly addressing temporal dynamics because they require directionality of change from an ancestral to a derived state, information not always present or desired in spatial studies. We suggest three modifications to existing metrics that allows to partition ecological and evolutionary contributions to changes in population and community trait values across landscapes. Applying these spatially modified metrics to empirical data of natural systems may improve our predictability on when evolutionary processes are likely to play an important role in structuring the composition of communities. Using a Dapnia model system, we show that community diversity and community trait composition were better predictors of the evolutionary contribution than genetic properties of the evolving species or environmental features, indicating that the impact of evolution for communities can depend on ecological context. This illustrates that evolution in community context may result in various evolutionary outcomes, and this might have important consequences for how species respond to environmental change. 

February 26th: Prof. Carsten Rahbek: "The role of mountains in understanding geographical patterns of biodiversity – and the need for process-based models"

2018

November 15th: Prof Jane Reid: Integrating movements into evolutionary ecology: fitness, dispersal and seasonal migration

Jane Reid is a population and evolutionary ecologist who aims to understand how environmental, genetic and demographic variation combine to influence population dynamics and evolution. She couples long-term data from wild bird populations with sophisticated statistical and simulation models to understand the evolutionary causes and consequences of life-history variation, and feedbacks with population structure and dynamics, with particular interests in mating systems and partial seasonal migration. She was awarded the Zoological Society of London Scientific Medal and Marsh Award for Ornithology in 2013, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017.

March 19th: Prof. Andrew Hendry: Eco-evolutionary dynamics in the Galapagos

Andrew Hendry is a Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Andrew has published many influential studies in evolutionary ecology, such as on the mechanisms enhancing and constraining ecological speciation. Andrew is also a world expert in "eco-evolutionary dynamics", the exciting perspective that ecology and evolution reciprocally can influence each other. Andrew recently published a masterful, comprehensive synthesis on this exciting topic (“Hendry 2017. Eco-evolutionary Dynamics. Princeton University Press”). The Hendry lab studies eco-evolutionary dynamics in multiple natural systems, most frequently in lake versus stream stickleback, high-predation versus low-predation guppies, and Darwin’s finches. Finally, Andrew describes himself as a decent fisherman, OK photographer, wannabe boulderer, and bad guitar player. During his stay in Trondheim, he will demonstrate several of these skills.

February 15th: Dieter Ebert.

Dieter pursued his undergraduate studies in Munich, Germany and at the University of South Alabama, USA, and did his PhD with Stephen Stearns at Basel University. Postdoctoral stays in Russia, Panama (STRI), Oxford (with Bill Hamilton) and Imperial College (with John Lawton). From 1996 he was assistant professor at Basel University and from 2001 full professor at Fribourg University, Switzerland. In 2004 he returned to Basel University as chair of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology. His interest is in evolution, evolutionary ecology and genetics. The research of his group focuses on the evolution of host-parasite interactions, using Daphnia, bacteria and microsporidians as study systems. Central to this work is the link between phenomena observed in the field and the elucidation of the evolutionary mechanisms behind them. The work of his group has contributed to the understanding of host-parasite coevolution, evolution of virulence, genomics of adaptation, local adaptation and phenotypic diversity.

2017

December 11th: Jon Ågren: “Divergent selection and local adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana”.

Jon Ågren is professor at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is an evolutionary ecologist working on ecological and genetic mechanisms of local adaptation in plant populations, and the evolution of plant reproductive systems. To understand these processes, his group uses a combination of field surveys and experiments, reciprocal-transplant experiments, and genomic analyses. Important study systems include the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and its relatives A. lyrata and Arabis alpina, the primrose Primula farinosa, and rewarding as well as deceptive orchids. http://www.ieg.uu.se/plant/agren-group/

November 9th: Marjo Saastamoinen: "Responses and adaptations to environmental stress in natural populations"

Marjo Saastamoinen studies the processes and the underlying genetic mechanisms that allow organisms in the wild to cope with environmental variation. The main study system of her group is the Glanville fritillary butterfly metapopulation in the Åland Islands. This classic metapopulation consists of a network of 100s of local populations that exist in a stochastic balance between local extinctions and re-colonizations. The long-term population level data on the butterfly and numerous related ecological factors such as host plant density and parasitism prevalence, together with newly developed genomic tools allows them to synthesise in a multidisciplinary fashion the importance of both ecological and genetic factors influencing life history variation in the wild.

More about Marjo Saastamoinen here.

November 6th, Martin Lind: “Trans-generational effects and trade-offs in adaptation and ageing”.

Septemer 21st: Jörgen Ripa: From stochastic environments to the evolution of intra- and inter-specific interactions - closing the feedback loop

Jörgen Ripa is an evolutionary ecologist working on a wide range of questions, spanning from stochastic population dynamics to macroevolutionary processes. Using theoretical modelling, he investigates how populations, species and communities evolve in variable and stochastic environments. What is the interplay between population dynamics, driven by ecological interactions, and environmental fluctuations? How do species, and in particular species interactions, evolve when all interacting species vary in abundance over time and space?

Jörgen Ripa is a researcher and associate professor in evolutionary ecology at Lund University.

Web: http://www.biology.lu.se/jorgen-ripa

June 20th: Prof. Hanna Kokko: Males exist. Does it matter?

Hanna Kokko is an evolutionary ecologist with the special ability of creating models that are understandable even for the field ecologist with strong math anxiety. Hanna and her group work at two interesting and important interfaces: one of their aims is to understand how evolutionary and ecological processes interact; another is to enhance communication between empiricists and theoreticians. Hanna Kokko was a Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Helsinki University, Finland, and at the Australian National University as a Professor of Evolutionary Ecology and an Australian Laureate Fellow. She is currently Professor in Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Zürich. She was awarded the 2010 Per Brinck Oikos Award, the British Ecological Society's Founder's Prize and she was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2014.

May 31st: Dave ReznickR8: Experimental Studies of the Interaction Between Ecology and Evolution in a Natural Ecosystem

May 2nd: Luc De Meester: Evolving metacommunities in a human-dominated world: rapid evolution and its eco-evolutionary feedback on communities and ecosystems

April 25th: Roberto Salguero-Gómez: Where are the limits of life? A multidimensional life history approach across the tree of life

Roberto Salguero-Gómez is a NERC Independent Research Fellow at the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield (UK) but from May 2017, he will be based at the Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford. He has a broad interest in questions like: What factors shape life history evolution in plants and animals? How, why and with what consequences does performance of the organism change with age, size and developmental stage? What mechanisms strengthen eco-evolutionary dynamics and its feedbacks?
Web: https://sites.google.com/site/robresearchsite/home/about-me

April 6th: Erik Svensson: Linking micro- and macroevolution: exploring the adaptive landscape of an old insect order