The central islands of Indonesia, between Java, Bali and Kalimantan (Borneo) on the west and Papua on the east - are a living laboratory for the study of evolution, known as the Wallacea region.

Every animal has a weapon of one sort or another, but the overwhelming majority of weapons stay small. Yet, sprinkled through the tree of life are species where weapons become extreme.

Choosing a mate is one of the most important decisions an animal can make. The fitness costs and benefits of mate choice have been analysed extensively in the context of sexual selection, and the neural and hormonal bases of mate choice have provided insights into how animals make such decisions.

Athena Aktipis discusses how an evolutionary approach to understanding and treating cancer can transform it from being a disease that threatens our lives to one we can live with.

Studying physiological responses in animals can tell us a lot about how much environmental stress animals can tolerate, helping to improve our understanding of animal biology and inform conservation management actions.

Bob Wong considers the role that behaviour plays in determining the fate of species under human-induced environmental change.

In anisogamous mating systems, males and females play different roles. This results in sexual differences in morphology and behaviour.

In this talk, I will introduce a suite of new methods and biological insights gained from the assembly and analysis of Eucalyptus genomes. I will start by introducing new methods of assembling and assessing nuclear, mitochondrial, and chloroplast genomes with long- and short-read data.

Throughout its long history, life has been a force of planetary transformation, remaking the air, the rocks, the landscapes, even painting the color of the sky and increasing the variety of Earth’s minerals.

Orchid mycorrhizal fungi are essential for orchid seed germination and survival due to the lack of endosperm in dust-like orchid seeds. I investigated the mycorrhizal associations in Cryptostylis and Drakaeinae orchids.

Dr Dar Roberts is a Professor in Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he has served since 1994. He is the UCSB Principal Investigator of the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center and leads the group in developing wildfire fuels maps and mapping fuel moisture using remote sensing.

CANCELLED - How do we explain costly and ridiculous traits like bright colours, elaborate ornaments, exaggerated weapons and lethal aggression?