SEB Conference Prague 2024

Dr. Sandra Binning

Associate Prof., University of Montreal

Sandra is an Associate Professor at the University of Montreal, Canada where she holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in the Eco-Evolution of Host-Parasite Interactions. She earned her Bachelors degree (honors) and Masters degree from McGill University. She then moved to Australia to complete her PhD at the Australia National University studying the eco-physiology of coral reef fishes. From there, she spent another 4 years as a post-doctoral researcher at the Université de Neuchatel in Switzerland studying host-parasite interactions in the context of marine cleaning mutualisms. Her lab now mostly explores the ecophysiology and behaviour of freshwater fishes.

Dr. Tamzin Blewett

University of Alberta

Guess what, I have flaws. What are they? Oh, I don’t know, I sing too much in the shower. Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I’ll hit someone with my car. However, my philosophy is basically this. And this is something I live by. And I always will. Don’t ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you have been. Ever. For any reason. Whatsoever. Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not, I like to be liked. But it’s not like my compulsive need to be liked. Like my need to be praised.

Dr. Kerri Lynn Ackerly

The University of Texas at Austin

Kerri Lynn is a Research Scientist who studies the impacts of anthropogenic stressors on fishes of the Gulf of Mexico. She is interested in multi-stressor impacts, including climate change and aquatic toxicants, on the physiology, development, and morphology of fishes. She spends her spare time discussing world affairs with her dogs and puttering around the garden. 

Dr. Amelia Munson

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Amelia is a postdoctoral researcher who studies the impact of environmental stressors on the links between behavior and physiology in fish. She is particulalry interested in the links between temparature and other stressors. When not hanging out with the fish, she is often snuggling her dog or knitting. 

Dr. Carolina A Freire

Federal University of Paraná

Carolina A Freire – Marine biologist (1987) from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Master of Science in Animal Physiology from University of São Paulo (1991), PhD in Physiology from Cornell University, USA (1996). Teaches comparative physiology of animals at the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, since 1996. Research on osmoregulation of aquatic animals, especially crustaceans, fishes and echinoderms. More recent focus on climate change effects, bioinvasion, and physiology of native species aimed at small-scale integrated multitrophic aquaculture. Deputy Convenor of the Special Interest Group – Osmoregulation in the Animal Section of SEB since 2022. SEB member since 2023.

 

Dr Mike Althaus

Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg

Mike Althaus studied biology at Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany, and received his habilitation in animal physiology in 2015. He served as a lecturer in animal physiology at Newcastle University, UK, from 2017 to 2020. Currently a professor at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, he leads a research group focused on ion transport in health and diseases, exploring the molecular physiology of ion transport, as well as the evolution and comparative physiology of epithelial sodium channels.

Dr Kyle T David

Vanderbilt University

I am a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow studying the phenotypic and biogeographic impact of duplication in opisthokonts by interrogating gene and genome duplication events through both macroevolutionary and macroecological lenses. My research background encompasses computational and laboratory techniques, with field experience from the Galápagos Islands to the Antarctic Peninsula. My taxonomic scope is similarly broad, having published on yeasts, frogs, marine invertebrates, and more.

Dr. Carol E Lee

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Carol Lee completed her BA and MA at Stanford University and her Ph.D. at the University of Washington. Following her postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD, she joined the faculty of University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA. Her work examines evolutionary genetic/genomic and physiological mechanisms underlying the ability of populations to invade novel environments. Her lab also explores the evolution of genome architecture across the Arthropoda. She currently also holds a position at Université de Montpellier working on evolutionary responses to climate change as part of Macron’s “Make Our Planet Great Again” initiative.

 

Dr Daniel MacQueen

University of Edinburgh

Dan holds a Personal Chair at the Roslin Institute, where he leads the Genome Biology Division. His research focuses on farmed fishes, but his group works across a range of farmed animals and their pathogens. Dan’s lab leverages omics technologies to understand the genetic, (epi)genomic and cellular basis for traits of importance to aquaculture, with the aim to reduce disease and improve fish welfare. Dan has long-standing interests in genome evolution, especially the role played by whole genome duplication (i.e. polyploidy) events in shaping genomic and functional diversity – here, his group uses salmonid fishes as a study system.

Dr. Daniele Liprandi

EVOMEC Lab, Zoologisches Institut und Museum, Universität Greifswald

Daniele is a Post-doc at the University of Greifswald, Germany. After a MSc in Physics, he completed a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. During both experiences he investigated the mechanical properties of bio-structures, with a focus on spider silk anchorages. He is now working in the Evolutionary Biomechanics lab of the Zoology Museum and Institute, where he is specialising in silk meta-structures, fibres mechanics, and data management and analysis.

Dr. Séverine L. D. Toussaint

CNRS

I specialize in arboreal adaptations in mammals and questions concerning the origins of primates and euarchontoglires. The overall aim of my research is to understand the various mechanisms involved in the evolution of arboreal adaptations at all morphological, cognitive and environmental levels.  I have an interdisciplinary approach and expertise, combining behavioral ecology, functional anatomy, biomechanics, paleobiology and scientific instrumentation.

I completed a PhD in Evolutionary Biology at the National Museum of Natural History of Paris (Sorbonne University, France) studying the evolution of hands and feet of small arboreal mammals in the context of primate origins, with an integrative approach. I then carried out a postdoctoral project in biomechanics at Berlin's Humboldt University (Germany), in collaboration with Dr. John Nyakatura and funded by two research grants from the Fyssen Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. During these 4 years I worked on the locomotor adaptations of climbing in primates and other arboreal mammal models.

Along these research projects, I am involved in developing new technical tools useful for my research. I notably co-developed a new spatially resolved force sensor technology with applications in robotics, haptics and healthcare.

I recently started a permanent position at CNRS since October 2023 (UMR 7207, MNHN, France).

I had the honor to receive: the SATT Lutech technological transfer award for my Leadership in two valorization projects robotics and optics (2017); the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Fellowship prize for my PhD work (2017); and the Chancellery of the Paris Universities Prize for my graduate work in the field of Biology (2019).

Noraly van Meer

Noraly van Meer grew up in the south of The Netherlands, and moved east to Wageningen for her studies. She received her BSc and MSc in Biology at Wageningen University, where she specialized in biomechanics and functional morphology. Her fascination with 3D imaging techniques began during her BSc project where she worked towards reconstructing the ovipositor apparatus of parasitic wasps. Hoping to find the answers to her research questions with better 3D scans, she successfully continued this project for her MSc thesis. After these morphological projects she went to the Brainerd lab at Brown University for her MSc internship, learning XROMM to see morphology in motion. Here, Noraly studied intra-oral food transport in white-spotted bamboo sharks. During her PhD project at the Experimental Zoology Group in Wageningen, she vowed to ‘never manually segment a muscle again’, and has spent the last 4 years developing a new methodology for semi-automatically quantifying muscle fibre orientations, in addition to visualizing the spatio-temporal muscle activity pattern, in one of the smallest living vertebrates: larval fish.

 

Dr. Emine Celiker

University of Leicester

I have a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, from the Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus. During my PhD, under the supervision of Prof. Dosiyev, I constructed and analysed efficient numerical methods for the solution of the steady-state heat equation in complex geometries. After my PhD, I held a one-year research fellowship at the University of Dundee, Scotland. As part of Prof. Lin’s group, I worked on the construction of novel finite element methods for the simulation of problems in biology and engineering. This was followed by a post-doctoral research assistant position at the University of Lincoln, of an ERC Consolidation Grant held by Prof. Fernando Montealegre-Z. Working as part of the Bioacoustics and Sensory Biology lab., I carried out the numerical investigation of the biomechanism behind the katydid (an insect relative of crickets) hearing system and pioneered the use of accurate 3D ear geometries in numerical simulations. The models both complemented the empirical data and helped us go beyond experimental limitations. Since June 2022, I am working as a lecturer at the University of Dundee, where I am conducting research in hearing using insects as models, as well as in other topics in computational biology and numerical analysis. 

Dr Charlie Woodrow

Dr Charlie Woodrow, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University

Dr Charlie Woodrow is a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, currently researching the biomechanics of buzz-pollination in bumblebees to aid in the development of micro-robotic systems. He obtained his PhD from the University of Lincoln, UK, specialising in the biomechanics of sound production and hearing in insects. During this time, Charlie conducted a range of studies, from reconstructions of extinct insect calls and auditory mechanics, to fieldwork in the tropics to help in the discovery of many new species and genera. During this period, he also helped and led many projects outside of his thesis, across broad themes including parasitology, locomotion biomechanics, and entomological research prioritization. More generally, his interests span many interdisciplinary themes within comparative biomechanics and acoustics, with a focus on the use of 3D data to investigate the interface between morphology and biophysics.

Dr Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou

Trust Early Career Fellow , University of Oxford Oxford University Museum of Natural History,

Dr Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford. Guided by a passion for the natural world, Leonidas has undertaken zoological research across the globe, from rugged mountains in the Balkans to unentered jungles in Papua New Guinea. Together with his team, he has discovered dozens of new species of insects and rediscovered mammals thought to have gone extinct. Leonidas’ interdisciplinary approach has led him to publish in diverse fields, ranging from arthropod systematics and palaeontology to ethnozoology and ancient DNA. Recently, he co-authored one of the major textbooks in the field of entomology (Essential Entomology. 2nd Edition, OUP). In the field of bioacoustics, Leonidas is best known for discovering a novel mechanism of vibration production in the insect order Hemiptera, and for studying the evolution of complex vibroacoustic devices. Together with engineers and mathematical biologists, Leonidas is currently applying cutting-edge micro-CT technology and neurophysiology to provide new insights on the biomechanics of nature’s foremost singers.

 

 

Dr Erin Brandt

Department of Biology University of Western Ontario

Dr. Erin Brandt is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Jasmine Nirody. Her primary interests include animal communication, sexual selection, and locomotion, using spiders and insects as study organisms. Dr. Brandt uses methods and approaches from evolution, behavioral ecology, biomechanics, and physiology, to ask questions at the intersections of these fields to better understand how animals function and evolve within their milieu of constraints.

Prof. Suvi Ruuskanen

University of Jyväskylä

Dr. Suvi Ruuskanen is currently an Associate Professor in Environmental Physiology at the Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä. Her research is at the intersection of environmental sciences and ecological, physiological and molecular ecology.  Dr. Ruuskanen is broadly interested in the mechanisms underlying organismal adaptation to environmental changes, including the role of transgenerational (incl maternal and paternal effects) and developmental plasticity. Her research currently has a strong focus on  host-microbiome interactions, to understand the causes and consequences of variation in gut microbiome, from molecular mechanisms to evolutionary patterns. These questions are being addressed in avian study systems.

Dr. Charli Davies

University of Jyväskylä

Dr. Charli Davies is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, where she investigates the role the gut microbiome can play in winter adaptation in wild birds, incorporating field data on wild populations with novel experiments in captive birds to disentangle cause and consequence of microbiome variation. Prior to this, she completed her PhD at the University of East Anglia investigating whether functional variation at immune genes were shaped by contemporary natural or sexual selection in a wild population of Seychelles warblers and the potential selective pressures (such as host-microbiome coevolution) driving this.

Dr. Silva Uusi-Heikkilä

University of Jyväskylä

Dr. Silva Uusi-Heikkilä is an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä. She is an evolutionary biologist and has focused in her research on human-induced changes in fish populations. Her work is mostly experimental using a zebrafish model system and she is studying the effect of anthropogenic stressors at phenotypic and molecular level. She has developed a great interest in animal microbiomes, particularly in the effect of human-induced selection pressure and environmental stressors on fish skin microbiota. She is also studying mammals and is currently investigating factors that affect equine gut microbiota.   

Dr. David Diez-Méndez

University of South Bohemia

David is a postdoctoral researcher at the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the University of South Bohemia. He is particularly interested in the reproductive behavior and early development of passerines. His research follows two different lines of work based on experimental approaches in the wild: 1) the plasticity of incubation behavior under different environmental conditions and the consequences for nestling development, and 2) the temporal dynamics of gut bacteria in the early-life, from the colonization process after hatching to stabilization before fledging, with a strong focus on parental effects.

Dr. Samantha Fontaine

Kent State University

Samantha Fontaine is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Brian Trevelline at Kent State University (Ohio, USA). She earned her PhD in Dr. Kevin Kohl’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA). She is interested in how host-associated microbial communities impact host physiology, ecology, and evolution in ectothermic vertebrates, and understanding the physiological responses of ectotherms to a changing climate. For her PhD, she studied how manipulating the microbial environment impacts the thermal physiology of larval amphibians. Currently, she is exploring how exposure to microbes during development affects the growth, physiology, and thermal tolerance of invasive lizards.

Dr. Mason Stothart

University of Calgary

Mason is a post-doctoral researcher working with Dr. Sarah Knowles at the University of Oxford, where he uses quantitative genetic methods to study host-microbiome symbioses in the wild. Prior to his current research on Skokholm Island house mice, Mason completed his BSc, MSc, and PhD in Canada while conducting gut microbiome research on a wide array of wildlife. In his research, Mason dovetails principles of community ecology, eco-physiology, and quantitative

Dr. Tamsyn Uren Webster

Swansea University

I am a lecturer in animal physiology at Swansea University in Wales. My research broadly focuses on the impacts of environmental challenges on animal and ecosystem health. I use molecular tools to elucidate mechanisms of adverse effect and, also, to establish whether, and how, organisms can adapt to changes in their environment. I am particularly interested in examining the potential for rapid adaptive responses to environmental stressors, such as those mediated via host-associated microbiomes and epigenetic mechanisms.  

Prof. Warren W. Burggren

University of North Texas

Talk title: Hedging against climate change: adaptation vs. epigenetically-derived plasticity 

Warren Burggren is a University Distinguished Research Professor and Fellow of the American Physiological Society at the University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas, USA.  He received his B.Sc. degree from the University of Calgary, Canada, and his PhD from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Burggren’s research focuses upon developmental, environmental and evolutionary comparative physiology of cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.  Burggren has published ~300 journal articles and book chapters, and has written, edited or co-edited nearly 20 books. Additionally, Burggren has been the major advisor of more than 50 post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. 

Emily Hardison,

University of Pittsburgh

Emily Hardison is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Kevin Kohl’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her PhD in Dr. Erika Eliason’s lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Emily is interested in factors that affect how aquatic animals respond to environmental change. Her current research examines (1) how nutrition influences thermal plasticity in fishes and (2) how environmental heterogeneity affects host-microbe relationships in amphibians.

Dr. Gail Schwieterman

University of Maine

Dr. Gail Schwieterman is an assistant professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. Gail is interested in how marine animals respond to environmental stress. Her research addresses basic and applied questions regarding resilience and vulnerability in the face of climate change, often through the perspective of cardiorespiratory physiology. 

Chris Wood

University of British Columbia

Chris Wood is now an Adjunct Professor of Zoology, University of British Columbia. He retired in 2014 from 38 years at McMaster University, where he remains Emeritus Professor and Lifetime Distinguished Professor of Biology. He is also a Research Fellow at the Amazon Research Institute, Manaus, Brazil, and a Research Professor at the University of Miami.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. His basic research areas include nitrogen metabolism, and the respiratory, ionoregulatory, and metabolic responses of fish and crustaceans to environmental stresses, with a particular interest in the adaptation of animals to extreme environments. His applied research deals with improving aquacultural practices, the impacts of acid rain, global warming, metal stress, ammonia, and salinization on aquatic ecosystems, and the improvement of environmental regulations, all through improved physiological understanding. 54 of his grad students and postdoctoral fellows now hold university faculty positions. He has served on the editorial boards of 8 journals, including at present Journal of Experimental Biology and Aquatic Toxicology.

Dr Anne Cremazy

INRS, Quebec City, Canada

Dr. Crémazy is a biogeochemist and ecotoxicologist who studies the fate and effects of trace metals in aquatic ecosystems. Her research programme is divided into three main topics: (1) characterizing the geochemistry of metals in natural waters, (2) characterizing the environmental and biological variables affecting metal bioavailability and toxicity, (3) exploring the biological fate of metals. This work covers a wide range of aquatic organisms (e.g. phytoplankton, gastropods, fish), environments (rivers, lakes, coastal areas), and regions (temperate, tropical and polar) and relies on techniques and approaches from analytical chemistry, biogeochemistry, biochemistry, toxicology, physiology, and ecology.

Dr Torben Göpel

University of University of Göttingen, Germany

Torben Göpel, obtained a PhD in Zoology from the University of Rostock, Germany, under the guidance of Christian Wirkner and Stefan Richter. Following a Postdoc position in Warren Burggren's lab in Denton, TX, he is currently engaged in research at Jan Huisken's lab in Göttingen, Germany. Employing light sheet microscopy, Torben explores the development of crustacean and annelid hearts. His research centers on understanding morphology, function, and evolution of invertebrate cardiovascular systems. Additionally, Torben maintains a keen interest in theoretical and epistemological aspects of evolutionary biology, seeking insights into the process of scientific understanding.

Dr Yangfan Zhang

Harvard University, USA

I am an NSERC post-doctoral research fellow in the laboratory of George V. Lauder at Harvard University. My research program has three themes: 1) Environmental effects on respiratory phenotypes in the light of ecology and evolution using high-precision and high-throughput aquatic respirometry; 2) Energetic costs of underwater population systems studied by integrating biomechanics and cardiorespiratory physiology; 3) Metabolic adaptations to the cold and low oxygen environment using Antarctic notothenioid fish as a model. Studying comparative physiology across multiple model systems enabled me to develop a decision matrix to identify the significance of metabolic variation in response to the environment.

Dr Gil Martinez Bautista

University of North Texas, Denton, USA.

Dr. Martinez Bautista is a Research Scientist II at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Texas. Gil got his Bachelor’s in Biology and Masters in Science at the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico, Mexico, his PhD at the Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco, Mexico, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Texas. His research investigates morphological, physiological, and molecular responses of developing piscine models to changes in the environment. In particular, his research focuses on variation (especially between heterozygous and highly homozygous zebrafish lines), heterokairy, developmental critical windows, and epigenetic inheritance of altered and tolerant phenotypes.

Andrea Morash

Mount Alison University ,

Dr. Andrea Morash is a comparative physiologist who focuses on physiological adaptations of marine and freshwater animals to environmental challenges. The main focus of the lab is on energy metabolism and is investigated at multiple biological levels from the mitochondrion to the whole animal to understand the capacity for acclimation/acclimatization to variable environments. Her research is fundamental in nature but is applied to both aquaculture research and conservation practices of threatened and endangered species.

Melanie Massey

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto, Scarborough

Dr. Melanie D. Massey is an ecophysiologist from Toronto, Canada. She developed a fascination with the long-term consequences of thermal variability while researching temperature-dependent sex determination in turtles. During her PhD at Dalhousie University, she continued to investigate within- and between-generation plasticity in response to thermal variability in zebrafish, a model organism. She is now a Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, using lab and field experiments to investigate how climate change conditions influence the invasion biology of Goldfish. Melanie is also a proponent of STEM community outreach and equitable pedagogical practices in the sciences.

 

Emily Donham

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California

Dr. Emily Donham is a marine ecologist from Santa Cruz, California. Her research focuses on how global change impacts the physiology andecology of marine species. Specifically, her PhD at the University of California Santa Cruz investigated the responses of kelp forest herbivores to changes in multiple covarying environmental drivers using a combination of oceanographic monitoring, SCUBA surveys, and mesocosm experiments. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Santa Barbara Coastal Long Term Ecological Research Program at the University of California Santa Barbara where she is using environmental and ecological time series to assess the strength of trophic cascades inside and outside of California’s marine protected areas.

Dr Suzie Currie

Acadia University,

Suzie is a Professor of Biology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada who integrates behavioural, physiological, and cellular approaches with ecologically informed experiments to address how fishes are affected by and cope with climate warming. She received her PhD from Queen’s University in Canada, focused on molecular and cellular responses of fish to heat stress. Suzie was the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellow at Darwin College, University of Cambridge, UK where she studied metabolic depression and environmental stress in ectothermic animals. She was a faculty member at Mount Allison University, Canada for several years where she continued to work with her students and collaborators on cellular, physiological, and more recently, behavioural responses of fish to ecologically relevant stressors. In 2018, Suzie moved to Acadia University as Dean of Pure and Applied Science with research focused on understanding how social behaviour influences how fish sense and respond to warming temperatures. She is currently the Associate Vice-President Research, Innovation, and Graduate Studies and her research program interrogates the interaction between abiotic and biotic factors and how they influence responses to warming and variable temperatures in fishes.

Dr Kath Sloman

University of the West of Scotland

Kath is a Professor at the University of the West of Scotland with interests in the integration of fish behaviour with physiology to increase understanding of fish welfare. She gained her Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow, investigating how social behaviour of salmonid fish affects their physiology and how in turn the physiology of individuals affects their performance within a dominance hierarchy. She held postdoctoral positions at McMaster University, Canada, investigating the interactions between metal ecotoxicology and fish social behaviour and Brunel University, UK, developing a method for the detection of endocrine disruptors. Kath was a lecturer the University of Plymouth for 6 years, where she became interested in the factors that drive between-individual variation in fishes, and the effects of parental stress on offspring phenotype. She then moved to Scotland where her research group focuses on how we can use behaviour as a tool for improving welfare in a range of aquatic animals, including fishes.

Dr. Alex Gunderson

Tulane University

My lab group studies thermal adaptation and responses to anthropogenic global change, with an emphasis on phenotypic plasticity. We apply a variety of perspectives and approaches, including experimental physiology, behavior, field ecology, theoretical modeling, and comparative methods.

The capacity to physiologically acclimate to temperature change is hypothesized to evolve where taxa experience high levels of environmental temperature variation. However, this hypothesis has low explanatory power, meaning other factors must be in play. I will discuss how variation in thermal acclimation ability could partially be explained by considering variation in the capacity for organisms to behaviorally thermoregulate.

Dr. Daiani Kochhann

Acaraú Valley University

I am a full professor at Acaraú Valley University in Brazil, teaching Animal Physiology and Ethology. My research interests are very broad, but my focus is on the effects of the environment on animal physiology and behavior, how environmental changes impact predator-prey dynamics, and the links among energy and behavior in individual animals. All my recent work has been done in two extreme tropical environments: the Amazon and the Caatinga, where my main focus is to investigate the effects of climate change on the physiology and behavior of fishes and amphibians.

Dr. Heidi MacLean

Aarhus University

For the past 15 years, I have been working to understand how ambient conditions shape insect physiology and behavior. As a Masters student with George Gilchrist, I investigated the interactions of temperature and photoperiod in Diptera. As a PhD student with Joel Kingsolver and Lauren Buckley, I looked at the evolution of melanin and role of behavioral thermoregulation in alpine Lepidoptera. In 2016, I moved to Aarhus where I have worked in collaboration with Johannes Overgaard and Jesper Sørensen to disentangle the role of evolution, acclimation, and behavior across taxa. Here I have become increasingly interested in the role of behavior in ectotherms when navigating a changing world.

In my talk at SEB, I will present some recent work evaluating the role of thermoregulatory behavior in small ectotherms that are often classified as “thermal conformers”. Specifically, we compared thermal preference of egg laying to reproductive output at fixed constant temperatures in Drosophila. We presented flies with a heterogenous environment, not dissimilar to microclimates found in most temperate habitats, and compared this to conclusions that would be drawn when performing a standard assay of reproductive output at fixed temperature to learn what physiological capacity and behavioral choice can tell us about thermal adaptation.

Dr. Danielle McDonald

Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, University of Miami

I am Professor of Marine Biology and Ecology and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Most generally, my work investigates how physiological mechanisms or behaviors that are controlled by glucocorticoids and/or monoamines may change during social interaction, pollution (e.g., pharmaceuticals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or sound), or low environmental oxygen levels (hypoxia). I am also interested in chemical communication in fish, and how marine fish, in particular, might use chemicals to communicate social status.

Dr. Rachael Morgan

University of Bergen

I am an ecophysiologist based at the University of Bergen, Norway. I am interested in understanding how fish can cope during extreme climate-related events (e.g. severe hypoxia, and heat waves). In my current postdoc I am combing fieldwork with lab experiments to investigate how large daily fluctuations in oxygen affect the physiology and behaviour of coral reef fish.

Dr. Natalie Pilakouta

University of St Andrews

I am a Lecturer in Behaviour, Ecology & Evolution at the University of St Andrews. The main aim of my research group is to improve our ability to predict population responses to climate change. Our research integrates behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology, and ecophysiology, using a wide range of methods, such as experimental evolution, field-based studies, and molecular biology techniques. We work mainly on fish and insect study systems, but we also use meta-analytic techniques to answer questions with a broad taxonomic scope.

In light of climate change, ectotherms are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures, because their body temperature and metabolic rate are directly affected by ambient temperature. Previous work has predicted that metabolic changes under climate change will be accompanied by a shift in thermoregulatory behaviour. In this talk, I will present results from a series of experiments that examine this link between thermal responses in metabolic rate and temperature preferences. This work was done using replicate populations of threespine sticklebacks from adjacent geothermally-warmed and ambient-temperature in Iceland. Using this ‘natural experiment’ allowed us to examine both evolutionary and plastic responses to temperature in both a lab and a field setting.

Dr. Brian Daniel Saltin

University of Bonn

No bio provided

Dr. Thomas R. Neil

University of Bristol

No bio provided

Dr Mónica Pradillo

Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) (Madrid, Spain)

Mónica Pradillo is a lecturer in the Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). Her research career has been mainly focused on the study of DNA repair and meiotic recombination using the model species Arabidopsis thaliana. She is currently studying the relationship between the chromosomes and the nuclear envelope during meiosis using a combination of molecular cytogenetics and molecular cell biology approaches. She is also involved in a project analyzing the effect of temperature on meiosis and fertility in wheat.

Dr Erin Brandt

Department of Biology University of Western Ontario

Dr. Erin Brandt is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Jasmine Nirody. Her primary interests include animal communication, sexual selection, and locomotion, using spiders and insects as study organisms. Dr. Brandt uses methods and approaches from evolution, behavioral ecology, biomechanics, and physiology, to ask questions at the intersections of these fields to better understand how animals function and evolve within their milieu of constraints.

Jean-Marie Frachisse

I was trained as a plant physiologist at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, France, where I got my PhD (1985) on the role of long-distance electrical signaling in plants. I then worked as an Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellow in Giessen, Germany where I studied intracellular pH regulation in plant cells. Following that, using the patch clamp technique I characterized some ion channels and investigated their role in early defense reaction induced by pathogens. My contributions include the discovery and characterization of the R-type channel, S-type channel, and ClC-transporter in the Arabidopsis model plant.

Currently, at the Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell (I2BC), Paris-Saclay University, France, I am developing my own research theme on the role of Mechanosensitive channels in plant mechanoperception. We recently showed in collaboration with Prof. E. Haswell that MSLs (Mechanosensitive channel Small conductance-Like) proteins provide a mechanosensitive channel activity at the plasma membrane of Arabidopsis. My research aims to understand how mechanosensitive channels enable plant cells to sense sustained stress at the root level and to sense passive shoot motion.

Dr Andrea Durant

No bio provided

Dr Till Harter

McMaster University

No bio provided

Dr Rachel Heuer

University of Miami

No bio provided

Dr. Marian Hu

University of Kiel

My research focusses on comparative membrane transport physiology in animals from basal metazoans to mammals. In my group we use a suite of electrophysiological, life-cell imaging as well as biochemical and molecular tools to study the physiology of membrane transport systems. A special focus is dedicated to pH regulatory systems underlying acid-base homeostasis and biomineralization. Here we use the sea urchin larva as a powerful model system that allows us to combine state of the art molecular approaches with fundamental physiological techniques to study the function of membrane proteins including channels, transporters and ion pumps.

Dr Dirk Weihrauch

University of Manitoba

No bio provided

Dr Jonathan Wilson

Wilfried Laurier University

No bio provided

Dr. Katie Gilmour

University of Ottawa

No bio provided

Dr. Sima Jonusaite

Kiel University

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Physiology at the University of Kiel, Germany. I am a comparative animal physiologist, particularly interested in how the most diverse group of animals, those without the spine a.k.a. invertebrates, adapt and survive in a myriad of habitats. My scientific inquiry has focused on the molecular physiology of invertebrate epithelial paracellular barrier forming septate junctions and their homeostatic roles in changing and challenging environments

Prof. Peter Piermarini

The Ohio State University

Dr. Peter M. Piermarini is Professor and Associate Chair of Entomology at The Ohio State University, based on the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) Wooster campus in Wooster, Ohio. He received his BSc in Biology from James Madison University and doctorate in Zoology from the University of Florida, before completing postdoctoral training at the Yale University School of Medicine and Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Piermarini was trained as a comparative and molecular physiologist studying the cellular mechanisms of salt and water balance and acid-base regulation in vertebrate and invertebrate animals. His current research program focuses on the molecular physiology of ion transport in mosquitoes and the discovery and development of insecticides with novel modes of action. He has contributed to over 75 publications during his career.

Prof. Jeppe Praetorius

Aarhus University

Jeppe Praetorius is a Professor in Medical Cell Biology at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focus is epithelial transport of water and ions including acid/base equivalents in rodents and human tissue. In the choroid plexus epithelium, he identified and functionally characterized the sodium-bicarbonate transporters Ncbe and NBCe2 (slc4a10 and slc4a5, respectively). Ncbe is most likely the “bottleneck” for cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) secretion by this tissue, as Ncbe has been established as the main sodium loader in the tissue. It was also demonstrated that NBCe2 is the main CSF pH-normalizing mechanism after both metabolic and respiratory acid challenge. Together, the work has resulted in a new concept regarding the orchestration of molecular mechanisms in cerebrospinal fluid secretion. The consequences of Ncbe gene disruption in mice was studied regarding cellular transport protein function, metabolic changes, as well as functional changes at organs and intact animal levels. Furthermore, it was shown that the choroid plexus in not a “reversed” epithelium despite the atypical apical membrane expression of the Na,K-ATPase: the basic cell polarity proteins are distributed as in other epithelia. Ongoing studies aim to experimentally address the phenomenons of isosmolar transport across epithelia and solvent drag.

Dr. Alexander Venn

Monaco Scientific Centre

Dr Alexander Venn is a Senior Scientist in the Physiology and Biochemistry team at the Centre Scientifique de Monaco. His research concerns the environmental physiology of reef-building corals, with an emphasis on pH regulation and ion transport related to coral photosynthesis and calcification. Together with his team members, his work has a particular focus on the impacts of ocean acidification and temperature changes on coral calcification. Before arriving in Monaco, he carried out his Ph.D. at the University of York, UK and postdoctoral research at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science.

Prof. Rod Wilson

University of Exeter

My research focuses upon the physiology and behaviour of fish and aquatic invertebrates, especially how they regulate respiratory gas exchange, ion, water and acid-base balance (including calcification), digestion and excretion in response to environmental variation. Fundamental research investigating physiological mechanisms underpins all that I do, but I apply this knowledge to helping provide answers or solutions in three major areas:

1) The role of intestinal calcification and excretion in marine teleost fish in global ocean chemistry and biogeochemical cycles

2) Improving the sustainability of aquaculture

3) Understanding the impact of anthropogenic environmental change (climate-related and pollution)

Dr Essie Rodgers

Murdoch University

No bio provided

Dr Daniel Gomez Isaza

Murdoch University

No bio provided

Associate Prof. Wes Dowd

Washington State University, USA,

Wes Dowd is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University. His lab’s overarching research goal is to understand the interactions between environmental variation and physiological variation. The lab primarily uses intertidal invertebrates as model systems to study physiological variation in realistic scenarios and at multiple levels of biological organization. They quantify small-scale spatial and temporal environmental variation and its relationship to inter-individual and inter-species differences in physiological phenomena such as thermal tolerance, antioxidant capacity, and measures of performance. Current work also examines patterns and mechanisms of interactions between co-varying environmental factors.

Dr. Giovanna Mottola

University of Eastern Finland

Giovanna Mottola received her Ph.D. from the University of Turku, Finland, working in Katja Anttila’s research group. She studied the phenotypic plasticity of thermal tolerance and its transgenerational occurrence in fish exposed to multiple-stressor scenarios, with a focus on the interactive effects of heat waves and contaminants at physiological and cellular levels. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland in Anssi Vainikka’s group, where she is investigating the genetic mechanisms that underlie the distinct life-history and metabolic strategies of salmonids in response to human-induced environmental variations.

Dr Christian Damsgaard

Aarhus University

No bio provided

Dr Sjannie Lefevre Nilsson

Associate Professor, University of Oslo

Sjannie is an Associate Professor at the Section for Physiology and Cell Biology at the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo (Norway). She and her research group explore molecular mechanisms of anoxia tolerance in crucian carp using a variety of ‘omics’ techniques including single-cell transcriptomics and epigenomics, as well as comparative genomics.

Prof. Daniel Warren

Saint Louis University, US

Dr. Dan Warren is comparative physiologist and Professor of Biology at Saint Louis University in the USA. He earned a PhD from Brown University in 2005 and a BS in Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology from UC Davis in 2000. His work has centered on understanding the cardiorespiratory and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying hypoxia tolerance and temperature acclimation in vertebrates, especially reptiles.

Dr Daniel MacQueen

University of Edinburgh

Dan holds a Personal Chair at the Roslin Institute, where he leads the Genome Biology Division. His research focuses on farmed fishes, but his group works across a range of farmed animals and their pathogens. Dan’s lab leverages omics technologies to understand the genetic, (epi)genomic and cellular basis for traits of importance to aquaculture, with the aim to reduce disease and improve fish welfare. Dan has long-standing interests in genome evolution, especially the role played by whole genome duplication (i.e. polyploidy) events in shaping genomic and functional diversity – here, his group uses salmonid fishes as a study system.

Dr Jules Devaux

University of Auckland

Jules Devaux is a Research Fellow at the Applied Surgery and Metabolism Lab (ASML) within the School of Biological Sciences. His research investigates mitochondrial function and dysfunction across various animal models. Jules’ fellowship examines the impact of temperature on mitochondrial function in fish hearts, exploring multiple biological levels from perfused hearts to electron microscopy. His research also extends to mitochondrial plasticity in anoxia-tolerant sharks and the understanding mitochondrial response to hypoxia in intertidal fish. With a translational aspect, Jules has been involved in motor neuron disease and cancer research. Additionally, he addresses mitochondrial metabolism and the novel oxygen-carrier M101 in ischemia-reperfusion injury for liver transplantation.

Dr. Lucie Gerber

University of Oslo

Lucie is a Researcher at the Section for Physiology and Cell Biology at the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo (Norway). She is part of the Lefevre-Nilsson’s research group and explore the physiological and molecular mechanisms of anoxia tolerance in crucian carp, including mitochondrial adaptation.

Dr Amanda Alice Wiesenthal

University of Rostock

Amanda is a post doc in Inna Sokolova’s lab at the University of Rostock (Germany) and previously worked on osmotolerance in the aquatic gastropod Theodoxus fluviatilis. Now, her work revolves around the osmotolerance in mussels with a focus on mitochondrial respiration using high resolution respirometry.

Dr. Alyssa Bowden

University of Queensland

Alyssa is a comparative and environmental physiologist based at the University of Queensland. Her research focusses on how environmental drivers impact and constrain physiology of aquaculture species. Alyssa is particularly interested in how anthropogenically modified environments influence the capacity and plasticity of physiological systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, osmoregulatory, and digestive) in order to maintain performance under challenging and changing conditions.

Prof. Steven C. Hand

Louisiana State University

Training: Ph.D. in cellular physiology, Oregon State University; Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  Academic positions held include Professor at University of Colorado, Boulder (1986-2000) and at Louisiana State University (2000-present).  Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Research interests encompass mitochondrial bioenergetics, mechanisms of quiescence and diapause in animals, and desiccation tolerance in cells and animals.  Currently, holds the Ron and Mary Neal Distinguished Professorship in Biological Sciences, and serves on the Executive Committee and is Treasurer for the Mitochondrial Physiology Society.  Sabbatical researcher previously at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom.  Has delivered presentations in the Brown & William Distinguished Speaker Series, University of Louisville, KY, and at the 115th International Titisee Conference (Germany) organized on the theme of ‘Evolutionary mitochondrial biology: molecular, biochemical, and metabolic diversity’.  Editorial experience includes serving as associate editor and on editorial boards for Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, Journal of Experimental Zoology, Journal of Comparative Physiology.

Prof. Wendy Hood

Auburn University

Dr Wendy Hood is a physiological ecologist, professor, and curator of mammals at Auburn University. She has published extensively on nutritional constraints on lactation and reproductive performance, and on the evolution of milk composition. The current focus of her lab group is understanding how mitochondria and their bioenergetic capacity impact intraspecific variation in life history and performance. She has received grant funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health and is a receipt of the prestigious NSF CAREER award. Her lab group has studied numerous species from diverse taxonomic groups. Her team currently uses mice (lab, wild-derived Mus, and Peromyscus sp.), Tigriopus copepods, migratory and non-migratory crowned sparrows, fall armyworm moths, Vanessa butterflies, and Oophaga frogs as their research models

Dr. Derek Somo

McMaster Universitry

Derek completed a PhD in Zoology at The University of British Columbia under the supervision of Dr. Jeffrey Richards. His doctoral research focused on metabolic and respiratory aspects of adaptation in fish to the temperature and oxygen variability characteristic of the intertidal environment. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University studying metabolic performance, muscle function, and mitochondrial physiology in high altitude mice in the labs of Dr. Graham Scott and Dr. Grant McClelland.

Dr. Neal Dawson

University of Glasgow

No bio provided

Dr Edward Ivimey-Cook

University of Glasgow

No bio provided

Amanda Pettersen

University of Sydney

No bio provided

Dr. Florencia Camus

University College London

My groups main interests revolve around understanding the drivers and constrains of mitochondrial genome evolution. I use Drosophila melanogaster to explore how this tiny genome impacts metabolic phenotypes, and the life-history consequences this brings. More specifically, I use classic genetic techniques to mix and match mito-nuclear genomes and understand the phenotypic and physiological consequences across various biological levels.

 

Prof. Neil B. Metcalfe

University of Glasgow

Neil Metcalfe is a physiological ecologist based at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is interested in the causes and consequences of individual variation, initially in terms of behaviour but latterly with a focus on metabolism and energetics at whole animal and mitochondrial levels. He mainly uses freshwater fishes as study systems.

 

Prof. David Reznick

University of California, Riverside

David Reznick is a distinguished professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at the University of California, Riverside.  He received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Robert Ricklefs.  He has published >220 research articles on evolutionary biology and specializes in the empirical and experimental study of evolution in natural populations of organisms, with a special focus on the evolution of life histories.  He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is a past fellow of the Guggenheim and Humboldt Foundations.  He is the author of “The Origin Then and Now: An interpretive guide to the Origin of Species”. 

Dr. Elisa Thoral

Lund University

As an ecophysiologist, I am interested in studying interindividual variability of several physiological parameters, as well as explaining the link between individual and cellular metabolisms. During my PhD in Lyon (France), I mainly focused on the effect of several environmental stresses on the muscular performance in fish. Then, I carried out a first postdoctoral project during which I contributed to improve experimental protocols for measuring mitochondrial metabolism using muscle biopsies in fish. I am currently a postdoc at Lund University (Sweden) with Dr. Andreas Nord, and I am now focusing on the physiological consequences of thermal fluctuations and dietary manipulations at different life stages in birds. In particular, I am interested in their effects on thermal tolerance and mitochondrial metabolism in different tissues, including blood. My research on endotherms and ectotherms gives me a broad understanding of how environmental conditions influence metabolic phenotype of individuals.

Dr Piero Calosi

Université du Québec à

Piero Calosi completed his PhD in Animal Ecology and Ethology at the Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy) in 2004. He subsequently worked in the UK at Royal Holloway, University of London as Postdoctoral Research Assistant (2004-2006) and at Plymouth University first as a Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2006-2007), and then as RCUK Research Fellow (2007-2012) and Assistant Professor (2012-2014). Since 2014, he is based at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (Quebec, Canada), where he is Professor of Marine Global Change Biology and Evolutionary Physiology. Since his PhD his primary interest has been that to determine the physiological capacity, plasticity and evolvability of different life stages, populations and species of marine invertebrates to combined environmental drivers, by striving to integrate responses at different levels of the biological hierarchy, and validate in situ where possible.

 

Dr Lauric Feugère

Université du Québec à Rimouski (Quebec, Canada),

Following his MSc. in Marine Biology (IUEM, France), Lauric Feugère completed his PhD in Biology at the University of Hull (2018-2023). Lauric navigated between research internships in marine ecology, impact studies, and aquaculture. Passionate about understanding how minute molecular processes influence higher-level stress mechanisms, Lauric deep-dived in transcriptomics and metabolomics to explain how stressed fish communicate via chemicals. In 2023, Lauric joined Prof. Piero Calosi’s Marine Eco-Evolutionary Physiology lab at UQAR (University of Quebec in Rimouski, Canada) as a postdoctoral fellow. His current projects aim at integrating the multi-omic responses of several aquatic species to combined global change drivers to identify molecular pathways of interest to guide conservation and fisheries strategies of vulnerable marine species

Dr Carolina Madeira

Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal),

Carolina Madeira did her PhD in Marine Biology and Aquaculture at University of Lisbon (2014-2018, Portugal). Since 2020, she is a research fellow at NOVA University of Lisbon (Portugal) and an integrated member of the Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit. Since her early career, she has been dedicated to studying the impacts of climate change in temperate vs. tropical marine ecosystems (in Atlantic, Western Indian and Eastern Pacific Oceans) and is now focused on her research line “Marine Omics for Ocean Climate-Resilience”, investigating marine fish response mechanisms and adaptations to climate stressors and extreme events and developing systems biology approaches to aid marine conservation efforts and aquaculture innovation.  

Dr Diana Madeira

University of Aveiro,

Diana Madeira became a Biologist in 2009 (University of Lisbon), subsequently enrolling in a M.Sc. in Marine Ecology at the same university. In 2012 she started a PhD in Sustainable Chemistry at NOVA University of Lisbon. In 2017 she joined the University of Aveiro as a post-doctoral research fellow in collaboration with the University of Québec in Rimouski. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Aveiro and her career has been devoted to the study of thermal tolerance in marine species, considering various time-scales (within and transgenerational), biological hierarchy levels (from molecules to ecosystems), and environmental contexts (single and multi-stressors).

Dr Lisandrina Mari

University of Jyväskyla

Lisandrina completed her PhD in Evolutionary Ecology at the University Grenoble Alpes in 2019, during which she focused on the adaptive potential of alpine salmonid populations to higher temperatures and decreases in habitat quality. During her postdoctoral position (2020-2023) at the Institute of Vertebrate Biology in Brno, Czech Republic, she began studying avian models and her research interests broadened to host-parasite co-evolution and animal cognition. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) postdoctoral fellow at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, where she is investigating the transgenerational effects of metal pollution in birds at the physiological, epigenetic, and behavioural levels.

Dr Andreas Nord

Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden

No bio provided

Dr Sameli Piirto

University of Jyväskylä

Sameli got his BSc and MSc from University of Oulu, Finland, and is currently a PhD Researcher in Evolutionary & Physiological Ecology Group in University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research focuses on the effects of environmental contamination on birds’ physiological traits, especially microbiome, epigenetics, and immunology. His aim is to provide new insights on the effects of radionuclide contamination on wildlife by studying two species of passerines at the radio contaminated area of Chernobyl. 

 

Dr. Katharina Ruthsatz

Technical University of Braunschweig

Dr Katharina Ruthsatz is an assistant professor and junior research group leader at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany. Her research interests encompass a broad range of aspects related to conservation physiology and ecotoxicology of ectotherms in general and amphibians in particular. Using experimental and theoretical approaches, she investigates how environmental stressors associated with global change affect vital rates such as growth, development, metabolism, and survival and how animals might cope with novel environments and challenges by exhibiting phenotypic plasticity and flexibility.

Dr Hayley Cameron

University of Melbourne, Australia

Hayley Cameron is a lecturer in marine ecology at the University of Melbourne. Her research seeks to understand the feedbacks between the evolution of life-history traits and the demography of populations. She is particularly interested in understanding how organisms respond and adapt to environmental change stressors, such as temperature and resource regimes. Her research blends field and laboratory experiments, statistical modelling and theory; with a strong focus on the amazing diversity in life histories that can be found in the sea.

 

Dr Pat Monaghan

University of Glasgow

Pat Monaghan is an evolutionary ecologist, based at the University of Glasgow, where she holds the Regius Chair in Zoology.  She did her PhD at Durham University on seabird ecology, followed by work on the interactions between seabirds and fisheries management.  She then began research on the effect of early life conditions in shaping individual life histories, involving studies in the field and the lab, at many different biological levels from physiology and molecular biology to ecology and behavioural biology. Her work is mainly on birds, with related work in other taxa. A current major focus is on the effects of maternal state, such as environmentally generated stress exposure and maternal age, on subsequent generations. This includes studies of mechanistic processes such as telomere dynamics and mitochondrial function.

Dr Melissa Pespeni

University of Vermont

Melissa Pespeni is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Vermont and recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Dr. Pespeni is an evolutionary biologist whose work aims to understand the genetic bases of complex traits and how organisms adapt to current and future environmental variation. Particularly, work from her group is leading to discoveries on the roles of standing genetic, epigenetic, and microbiome variation in shaping phenotypes in ecologically foundational marine organisms. She publishes in the leading journals of her field including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Communications, and Proceedings of the Royal Society, and has given several keynote seminars at premier, international conferences. As a creator and leadership team member of the Biological Data Science (BilDS) graduate training program (formerly QuEST), Dr. Pespeni aims to shift the dialogue in higher education to focus on diverse lived experiences as assets and to offer broader training opportunities in graduate education such as improv for science communication and applied internships with non-academic partners. Dr. Pespeni received her Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University and a B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Critical Gender Studies from the University of California, San Diego.

 

Moisés A Bernal

Assistant Professor , Auburn University, Alabama, USA.

My research interests are aimed at understanding the responses of marine fishes to environmental fluctuations, with special emphasis on ocean warming and habitat degradation. The research conducted in my lab combines molecular, physiological, and behavioral proxies to study the response of fishes to acute and long-term changes. In doing so, my research group aims to develop predictions of which populations and species might be better suited to survive future changes, and which ones will be more at risk.

 

Dr. Zara-Louise Cowan

Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)

Zara is a Research scientist, postdoc at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). She has worked with a variety of aquatic organisms across the fields of marine ecology, behavioural ecology, and ecophysiology. A large focus of her research has been on factors affecting the early life stages of aquatic organisms and how these can shape populations. Her current research topics include thermal adaptation and climate change vulnerability across life stages in fish.

 

Dr Anna H. Andreassen

Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Anna H. Andreassen recently finished her PhD on the mechanisms and evolution of thermal tolerance in fish at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is interested in the thermal biology of animals experiencing temperatures above their thermal limits and her work includes studying neural function during warming, how selection for warming tolerance affects populations and developing methods for assessing warming tolerance in early life stages.

Jeremy De Bonville

University of Montreal

I am currently in my last year of my Ph.D. program in the Binning Lab at the Université de Montréal. Extreme heat episodes tend to be more frequent and the response of naturally infected fish remains poorly documented. I am specifically interested in submitting fish to multiple acclimation treatments and evaluating how performance traits (thermal tolerance, swim performance, aerobic performance) are affected by both parasites and temperature. In my spare time, I like to swim in lakes with my fish friends, play Pokémon and I do a couple CTmax tests here and there.

Dr Tim Burton

Norwegian Institute for Nature Research

Tim Burton is still trying to be a biologist, currently at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research in Trondheim, Norway. He likes to work on a broad range of topics but is presently interested in better understanding the timescale of phenotypic plasticity using a combination of experiments and meta-analysis.

Prof. Neil B. Metcalfe

University of Glasgow

Neil Metcalfe is a physiological ecologist based at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is interested in the causes and consequences of individual variation, initially in terms of behaviour but latterly with a focus on metabolism and energetics at whole animal and mitochondrial levels. He mainly uses freshwater fishes as study systems.

 

Dr. Jose C. Noguera

University of Vigo

Jose C. Noguera is an evolutionary ecologist who combines behavioural and functional studies to understand phenotypic variation in animals. Much of his research has focused on the physiological and molecular processes underlying variation in life-history traits (e.g. oxidative stress, telomere length, telomerase activity or gene expression, etc.) and their consequences for offspring life-history trajectories, including somatic and germline ageing. His research is multidisciplinary, involving field and laboratory studies in birds and, more recently, in insects.

Dr. Madison Earhart

University of British Columbia

Madison Earhart recently finished her PhD on the roles of plasticity and adaptation in response to environmental change in many species of fish. Madison is continuing her research with species of conservation concern, like white sturgeon, to further investigate the roles of molecular and phenotypic plasticity in resilience to climate change stressors. In her post-doc, Madison is working with wild populations of white sturgeon to define population stressors and create non-lethal molecular biomarker panels for population assessment. 

Ivan Gomez-Mestre

Doñana Biological Station (CSIC)

Ivan Gomez-Mestre is an evolutionary biologist, interested in understanding the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and the role that plasticity may play in adaptive evolution and the origin of evolutionary innovations. He has worked mostly (but not exclusively) with amphibians, describing general patterns of their life-history evolution, and studying the mechanisms underlying the observed patterns.  

Dr. Jennifer Hellmann

The Ohio State University

I am an integrative biologist who uses fish as a model system to understand how plasticity, both within and across generations, drives phenotypic change in response to variation in the social and ecological environment. To answer these questions, I work at the intersection of behavior, evolution, and ecology using field and laboratory experiments, molecular tools, and physiological manipulations. 

Dr. Alex Little

McMaster University

Alex Little is an assistant professor at McMaster University (Canada). He earned his MSc (Queen’s University, Canada) studying the evolution of oxidative metabolism in endothermic fishes, and his PhD (The University of Sydney, Australia) studying the regulatory role of thyroid hormones in cold-acclimation responses in fish. His research takes an integrative approach to uncover pathways regulating plastic responses to test for potential costs or trade-offs. His current work uses transgenic zebrafish models to explore various nuclear receptors as integrators of plastic responses, starlet sea anemones to test for costs and trade-offs associated with plasticity, and metabolomics to understand signaling pathways controlling heat production in a weird endothermic plant, the Eastern skunk cabbage.

Dr Christian Damsgaard

Aarhus University

No bio provided

Dr. Michael Berenbrink

University of Liverpool

Michael is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. He obtained a doctorate in Natural Sciences at Düsseldorf University, Germany, then worked as Assistant Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, before accepting his current position in Liverpool. Michael’s primary research interests lie in the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology of Animals, where he uses the vertebrate oxygen transport chain as a model system for studying the evolution of mechanisms of environmental adaptation. He serves on the editorial board of four journals and has delivered over 40 invited presentations across the world.

Dr. Catherine Ivy

Western University, Canada

Dr. Ivy is a NSERC Banting postdoctoral researcher studying songbird migration, specifically how songbirds are able to maintain oxygen uptake and movement to the flight muscle during migration at high altitudes. 

Dr. William Joyce

Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre

William Joyce received his BSc in Zoology from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and PhD in Bioscience from Aarhus University (Denmark). During his doctorate he studied the regulation of cardiac filling in reptiles and fishes. In his postdoctoral career he continued to investigate the evolution of the heart and cardiac proteins at the University of Ottawa (Canada), University of Manchester, and Aarhus University. He now works as a senior postdoc at the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre (through a contract held with CIBER; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red) studying sarcomeric proteins, adrenergic signalling, and cardiac metabolism.

Dr. Michael Sackville

The Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole USA

Mike earned a PhD with Dr. Colin Brauner at the University of British Columbia in 2020 and has since worked as a postdoc with Dr. Andrew Gillis at the University of Cambridge and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. His research combines tools from comparative physiology and developmental biology to explore the origins and evolution of gas and ion homeostasis in animals.

Dr. Nicolai Konow

Animal Biomechanics Group Convenor

Nicolai Konow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at UMass Lowell. He is broadly interested in how animals move to feed and avoid being feed upon. He received his Ph.D. from James Cook University in Australia for work on the evolution and ecology of extra joints in the lower jaw of fishes that bite their food from substrates on coral reefs. As a postdoc, he studied muscle-tendon physiology and comparative biomechanics in quite diverse systems including neonatal mammal suckling and swallowing (Johns Hopkins U.), energy dissipation in bird hind limbs and elastic recoil action in bat wings (Brown University), and muscle tendon mechanics in rodent feeding and locomotion (Concord Field Station, Harvard University). Currently, his lab is working towards a comparative biomechanics synthesis for muscle-tendon function across the crucial survival systems of feeding and locomotion.

Dr. Jack Thomson

University of Liverpool

I am a marine biologist working at the University of Liverpool, UK. My work focuses on the links between animal personality and stress physiology, using animal models ranging from fish to anemones, and everything in between. This work helps me answer questions about the diversity of animal responses to their environment, which may include climate change, pollutants, and even other animals (friend or foe). I love getting out into the field, but also use a range of lab techniques, including omics, to really get to the nitty-gritty of these questions.