Ecology and Evolution Seminar Series
Seminars from the RSB Division of Ecology and Evolution (E&E).
No events are currently scheduled.
Past events
24
Sep
2020
E&E Webinar: Modelling life history evolution under cancer risk: what can we learn from elephants and dinosaurs? »
Each cell division comes with the risk of mutations that could eventually lead to cancer. How do organisms attain their mature sizes without succumbing to cancer? What happens when large-bodied lineages shrink in size? Can cancer risk constrain body size evolution?
18
Sep
2020
E&E PhD Exit Seminar: The age old question: Insights from the superb fairy-wren »
Iteroparous animals often express dramatic variation in life-history traits over the course of a lifetime.
03
Sep
2020
E&E Webinar: Metascience should not be defined by its methods »
Metascience, or metaresearch, is a field of research that has grown out of the replication crisis. Amongst other things, metascience evaluates and monitors open science initiatives and other interventions to improve scientific practices and cultures.
27
Aug
2020
E&E Webinar: Darwin comes to Town: evolution in Urban environments »
Menno Schilthuizen is an evolutionary biologist with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. He is also an active science writer and speaker.
21
Aug
2020
E&E PhD Exit Seminar: Fear and Learning on the Yarra: Predator Awareness Training in the critically endangered Helmeted Honeyeater »
Captive breeding and reintroduction are key to modern conservation, but high predation in recently released animals means reintroductions often fail.
20
Aug
2020
E&E Webinar: Science Fictions: Some Cautionary Tales from the Replication Crisis »
Why is there a Replication Crisis? That is, why are there so many findings in the published scientific literature that can't be replicated, or are exaggerated far beyond reality?
19
Aug
2020
PS Webinar Series: Technological convergence for Planetary Health - Precision Landscape Regeneration »
Agriculture and ecosystems are tipping toward collapse due to land use and climate extremes. Irreversible feedbacks in the land system can lock in food insecurity, biodiversity loss and a hot house world.
13
Aug
2020
E&E Seminar: Sexual deception and its reversibility »
Native Australian orchids have featured strongly in Rod's research, where he has explored a range of fascinating ecological, biochemical, molecular and evolutionary questions.
06
Aug
2020
E&E Webinar: Using Experiments in Nature to Study Evolution in Real Time »
Jonathan Losos will speak on his career-long experimental research program manipulating the presence of lizards on small islands in the Bahamas to test ecological and evolutionary hypotheses.
30
Jul
2020
E&E Webinar: How social and environmental dynamics shape animal culture »
There is an increasing body of evidence for the existence of animal cultures. Recent work has also suggested cultural traits can be subject to selection, changing in form, function or distribution.
23
Jul
2020
E&E Webinar: Stereo vision and prey detection in the praying mantis »
Praying mantises are the only insects known to have stereo vision. We used a comparative approach to determine how the mechanisms underlying
stereopsis in mantises differ from those underlying primate stereo vision.
09
Jul
2020
E&E Joint Webinar: Some benefits of blue sky and open phylogenetics research for understanding SARS-CoV-2 »
Having spent much of the last 15 years trying to improve molecular phylogenetics, I had formed the fairly firm view that my research was very interesting (of course!!!) but rather useless in the short term.
09
Jul
2020
E&E Joint Webinar: Walking in Wallacea: Expanding the species inventory on Buton Island, Sulawesi »
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.
02
Jul
2020
E&E Webinar: Extreme Weapons: A Natural History »
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.
11
Jun
2020
E&E Webinar: “Crazy Love”: Nonlinearity and irrationality in mate choice »
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.