Seminars

Department of Natural History Research Seminar Series

Spring 2022

January 7, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Matt Smith
Institution: IFAS, University of Florida
Title: Biodiversity, Biogeography, and Bird Dispersal: Explorations of the Ectomycorrhizal Fungi of Patagonia
Description: Matthew E. Smith (Associate Professor of Plant Pathology & Curator of the FLAS Fungarium) will discuss recent work from his lab on the biodiversity and biogeography of ectomycorrhizal fungi from Patagonia. Dr. Smith will cover the unique biogeographic history of Patagonia’s fungal communities, particularly the fungi that are symbiotically associated with Southern Hemisphere trees in the family Nothofagaceae. He will also present new data on mycophagy and spore dispersal of fungi by native ground dwelling birds and discuss the implications for these widespread and common interactions across Patagonia
Host: Lucas Majure

January 14, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Liliana Davalos
Institution: Stony Brook University
Title: Sensing in the dark
Description: Despite their nocturnal habits, bats occupy virtually all terrestrial niches on Earth. Yet the molecular adaptations underlying this ecological diversity remain underex- plored. Working with an international team for the better part of a decade, we have used amplicons, transcriptomes, hybrid probes, and more recently genomes to relate foraging and feeding ecology to sensory genes and pathways. We have found numerous, parallel instances of pseudogenization in vision and chemosensory genes, matching diversity of diet and olfactory receptors, the conservation of func- tional vomeronasal receptors since the K-T boundary in some lineages, and rampant preadaptation to divergent diets in sensory pathways. Our findings have upended the model of adaptation in response to ecological opportunities in the form of new diets, suggesting instead that shifts in foraging underlie much of the diversity we see today.
Host: Michelle LeFebvre

Join Zoom

January 21, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Chris Barratt
Institution: German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
Title: Environmental genomics to understand past and future biodiversity responses to global change
Description: I am a conservation biologist with a strong focus on population genomics and species distribution modelling, in my research I use bio- and ecoinformatic approaches to model how populations within species respond differently to changing environmental conditions. In line with this theme I’ll present two ongoing projects: in part one I will show how I am using paleoclimate and whole exome sequencing data to understand how intraspecific diversity in chimpanzees has been influenced by paleoclimatic change since the Pleistocene. In part two I’ll introduce a new project that assesses the adaptive capacity of populations within species and quantifies their vulnerability under future global change in a novel climate change vulnerability assessment framework.
Host: Greg Jongsma

Join Zoom

March 4, 3p.m.:

Graduate Student Lightning Talks

Speakers: Niyomi House, Trevor Duke, Rachel Keeffe, Mitchell Riegler
Institution: University of Florida
Host: TBD

Fall 2021

September 3, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Fabiany Herrera
Institution: Chicago Botanic Garden
Title: Early Cretaceous Floras from Asia and Northern South America: Gymnosperms against Angiosperms
Description: Newly discovered fossil floras from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia and China reveal a fascinating gymnosperm-dominated landscape. At the same time, the South American tropics show a remarkable mixture of flowering plants and conifers.
Host: Steve Manchester

September 10, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Juan Daza
Institution: Sam Houston State University
Title: Back to the past, time-traveling with geckos and other lizards
Description: In this talk, we will look at lizards embedded in amber from three different deposits around the world. Each locality can tell us details of lizard diversity in the past. This work has been the result of several research projects where paleontologists and herpetologist work together to interpret these amazing fossils.
Host: Ed Stanley

Watch Recording

September 17, 3p.m.:

***Promotion Seminar***
Speaker: Akito Kawahara
Institution: University of Florida
Title: Evolution and diversification of butterflies and moths
Host: Jon Bloch

September 21, 12p.m.:

McGuire Center “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research”
Speaker: Andrei Sourakov
Institution: McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Title: “From Automeris to Zebra Longwings: probing Lepidoptera diversity with hybridization and wing-pattern manipulation experiments”

Watch Recording

September 24, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Selena Smith
Institution: University of Michigan
Title: Dead Plants Do Tell Tales: fossil insights about the evolution of monocot flowering plants
Description: Monocot flowering plants include many ecologically and economically important groups including grasses (wheat, rice, corn), palms, bananas, lilies, orchids, and pondweeds. Understanding their evolutionary history, therefore, is important in order to understand their response to ecological and environmental changes on geological time scales. The fossil record provides concrete data on the past diversity and distribution of extinct monocots, and thus is critical to study. While monocots tend to display cryptic morphologies making them more difficult to identify, progress on applying novel techniques and building a modern phenotype comparative dataset has resulted in better understanding the evolutionary history of several monocot groups. Examples from studies on the Zingiberales (bananas, gingers, and relatives) highlight the benefits of leveraging natural history collections, especially using non-destructive techniques, to better place extinct taxa within the “tree of life” and understand biogeography. Fossils from the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary of India are revealing details on cryptic extinct lineages of monocots as well as more well-known groups such as the palms. MicroCT analysis has proven beneficial in both studying particular fossils, but also in being able to build modern comparative datasets that help us ascertain the affinities and significance of fossils. The monocot paleobotanical record highlights the complexity of evolutionary history and why inclusion of the fossil record is critical.
Host: MacKenzie Smith

October 1, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Lindsay Campbell
Institution: University of Florida
Title: Leveraging mosquito control district data for biodiversity investigations
Description: Mosquito control districts trap and identify mosquito species on a regular basis for the purpose of monitoring vector abundances and nuisance biting mosquitoes, but these collections have great potential for downstream biodiversity investigations. Unique challenges and opportunities exist to leveraging mosquito control district collections for biodiversity investigations, while also providing valuable opportunities to engage with and learn from knowledgeable stakeholder groups.
Host: Rob Guralnick

Watch Recording

October 5, 9a.m.:

McGuire Center “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research”
Speaker: Antonia Monteiro
Institution: Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore (NUS)/Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Title: “The developmental origin and evolution of a novel complex trait: butterfly eyespots” (Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research Series)

Watch Recording

October 15, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Justin Dunnavant
Institution: UCLA
Title: Have Confidence in the Sea: Archaeologies of Marronage
Description:
In this talk, I discuss how archaeology has contributed to our understanding of marronage in the Atlantic world. Drawing from contemporary LiDAR and geospatial data in St. Croix and former Danish West Indies, I show how newer archaeological methods expand our understanding of maroon geographies and ecologies while also turning our attention toward maritime seascapes. Theoretically, I engage scholars in Black Geographies to think more critically about the sea/ocean as a site of history, memory, placemaking, and liminality, phenomenologically positioning bodies of water and seafaring vessels as a (de)generative space of Black Atlantic sociality and possibility. We can bridge terrestrial and maritime experiences by employing various “archaeologies” of marronage.
Host: Neill Wallis and Michelle LeFebvre

October 19, 12p.m.:

McGuire Center “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research”
Speaker: Swanne Gordon
Institution: Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis
Title: “Maintaining diversity in nature: Lessons from an aposematic moth”

Watch Recording

October 22, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Cathy McFadden
Institution: Harvey Mudd College
Title: Hidden in plain sight: cryptic biodiversity and regional endemism in the Indo-Pacific zooxanthellate soft corals
Description: Zooxanthellate soft corals (Anthozoa: Octocorallia) are dominant space-occupiers on coral reefs across the Indo-Pacific. Their nominal biodiversity rivals that of the reef-building scleractinians, but the true number of species and their biogeographic distributions remain unclear as a result of our poor understanding of species boundaries in these morphologically plastic organisms. Using molecular approaches to species delimitation, we are revealing high levels of cryptic biodiversity and regional endemism in species groups that have historically been assumed to have pan-Indo-Pacific geographic ranges.
Host: Gustav Paulay

October 29, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Nesra Yannier
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Title: Intelligent Science Exhibits: Transforming Hands-on Exhibits into Mixed-reality Learning Experiences
Description: We have been developing Intelligent Science Exhibits and a mixed-reality platform bridging physical and virtual worlds to improve children’s inquiry-based STEM learning, fostering their curiosity and 21st century skills like critical thinking and persistence. Our award-winning, patented technology adds an intelligent AI layer on top of physical, hands-on exhibits to provide personalized interactive feedback to children and families as they experiment and make discoveries in the real world. In this talk, I will talk about our technology and exhibits as well as the experiments we have conducted comparing the mixed-reality system to a screen-only version and a standard hands-on museum exhibit
Host: Bruce MacFadden and Megan Ennis

Watch Recording

November 5, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Phoebe Stubblefield
Institution: University of Florida
Title: Un-erasure 101: The People of the June 2021 Tulsa Race Massacre Oaklawn Exhumations
Description: The effort to find the victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, begun in the 1990s, reached the exhumation phase for the Oaklawn Cemetery site in June 2021. Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield presents the relevance of Oaklawn Cemetery to the history of the race massacre investigation, and describes what she discovered about the cemetery itself, and the people recovered in the recent exhumation.
Host: Gifford Waters

Watch Recording

November 16, 10a.m.:

McGuire Center “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research”
Speaker: Chris Jiggins
Institution: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Title: Convergent evolution in butterflies: from chemicals to colour patterns

Watch Recording

November 19, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Chris Sidor
Institution: University of Washington
Title: The original bone heads: paleobiology and evolution of burnetiamorph therapsids
Description: Burnetiamorphs were middle-to-late Permian therapsids (i.e. stem-group mammals) known from fossils across southern Africa and Russia. Notably, were among the first clades of tetrapods to develop a wide array of bony ‘horns’ and other adornments on their skulls, which in other lineages have been considered characteristics enhancing species recognition or mate competition. In this seminar, I will provide an overview of the clade, compare their cranial anatomy to the pachyostosis seen in other clades (e.g., pachycephalosaur dinosaurs), and discuss the macroevolutionary implications of burnetiamorphs being much more speciose than expected given its comparatively small sample size.
Host: David Blackburn

November 30, 12p.m.:

McGuire Center “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research”
Speaker: Chase Kimmel
Institution: McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Title: Understanding three rare bees of the southeastern USA

December 3, 3p.m.:

Speaker: Post-Doc Lightning Talks: Maggie Hantak, Natalie Claunch, Rob Lasley, Jenna Moore
Institution: University of Florida
Titles:

Jenna Moore: Sand-strikers, grunge-moppers, and fairy tube worms: using collections to investigate morphological evolution in Annelida.

Maggie Hantak: A computer vision model for assessing species color pattern from community science images

Rob Lasley: Low hanging fruits of labor: crab speciation stories gleaned from worldwide collections and barcoding

Natalie Claunch: Islanders on the mainland: exploring thermal influences on establishment in an invasive lizard

Hosts: Gustav Paulay and Rob Guralnick

Watch Recording

December 7, 12p.m.:

McGuire Center “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research”
Speaker: Charlie Covell
Institution: McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Title: Seventy-one years with Lepidoptera

Watch Recording

Spring 2021

January 15, 12 p.m.:

Speaker: Hesham Sallam
Institution: American University in Cairo
Title: Breaking new ground in the study of Egypt’s ancient prehistory
Host: Rachel Narducci

Seminars

Department of Natural History Research Seminar Series

Spring 2022

January 7, 3p.m.:

January 14, 3p.m.:

January 21, 3p.m.:

March 4, 3p.m.:

Fall 2021

September 3, 3p.m.:

September 10, 3p.m.:

September 17, 3p.m.:

September 21, 12p.m.:

September 24, 3p.m.:

October 1, 3p.m.:

October 5, 9a.m.:

October 15, 3p.m.:

October 19, 12p.m.:

October 22, 3p.m.:

October 29, 3p.m.:

November 5, 3p.m.:

November 16, 10a.m.:

November 19, 3p.m.:

November 30, 12p.m.:

December 3, 3p.m.:

December 7, 12p.m.:

Spring 2021

January 15, 12 p.m.:

January 22, 3 p.m.:

January 26, 12 p.m.:

January 29, 3 p.m.:

February 5, 12 p.m.:

February 9, 12 p.m.:

February 12, 3 p.m.:

February 18, 12 p.m.:

February 19, 3 p.m.:

February 23, 12 p.m.:

February 26, 3 p.m.:

March 2, 12 p.m.:

March 5, 3 p.m.:

March 12, 3 p.m.:

March 16, 12 p.m.:

March 19, 3 p.m.:

March 26, 3 p.m.:

March 30, 12 p.m.:

April 2, 3 p.m.:

April 9, 3 p.m.:

April 16, 3 p.m.:

Fall 2020

September 4, 3:00 p.m.:

September 11, 3:00 p.m.:

September 15, 12:00 p.m.:

September 18, 3:00 p.m.:

September 25, 3:00 p.m.:

October 2, 3:00 p.m.:

October 7, 10:00 a.m.:

October 9, 3:00 p.m.:

October 16, 3:00 p.m.:

October 20, 12:00 p.m.:

October 23, 3:00 p.m.:

October 27, 12:00 p.m.:

October 30, 3:00 p.m.:

November 5, 12:00 p.m.:

November 6, 3:00 p.m.:

November 9, 10:00 a.m.:

November 13, 3:00 p.m.:

November 17, 12:00 p.m.:

November 20, 3:00 p.m.:

December 1, 12:00 p.m.:

December 4, 3:00 p.m.:

December 1, 12:00 p.m.: