Tangled Bank-seminarer

Our Tangled Banks Seminar on Thursday, May 5th at 14:30 will be given by Dr Patricia Brennan. Dr Brennan is an evolutionary biologist interested in how selection affects behavioural, physiological and morphological aspects of sexual reproduction, genitalia in particular. For more information please visit her website. 

We are happy to announce that Daniel Varajão de Latorre will give our Tangled Bank seminar on Thursday, June 2nd at 14:30. 

Daniel is a PhD student in the Marshall lab at Berkeley, California. He is investigating the biotic mechanisms that drive variation in speciation rate across groups and its relationship with extinction rate. He is interested in the processes that generate and maintain biodiversity across evolutionary time scales. His online bio also states an interest in the evolution and morphological diversity of the baculum.  

Title and Abstract to be announced.

We are happy to announce the first Tangled Banks seminar of 2022. Our first speaker will be Dr Alex Slavenko, a Royal Society research associate based at the University of Sheffield. Dr Slavenko describes his research interests as “the intersection between macroevolution, macroecology, morphology and biogeography.” His current work looks to understand the interaction between trait evolution and dynamics of diversification using new models of trait evolution, simulations, and large datasets for macroevolutionary analyses. For more information, please visit his website https://alexslavenko.weebly.com/ (note for more information about the individual research projects described on the research page click on the picture).

Professor Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan is a world renown palaeo-biologist at the University of Cape Town. Her research on the microscopic structure of mineralised tissues has led to a better understanding of the biology of a variety of extinct animals, such as, dinosaurs (including birds), the flying reptiles, and the mammal-like reptiles (therapsids). She has published extensively - both in high-ranking international scientific journals as well as, in the popular press, and her free online MOOC on “Extinctions - Past and Present” ranks in the Top 50 worldwide.  In addition, she has authored two academic books, The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bone (Johns Hopkins University Press, USA, 2005) and "The Forerunners of Mammals: Radiation. Histology. Biology" (Indiana University Press, USA, 2012), as well as four popular level books: "Famous Dinosaurs of Africa" (RandomHouseStruik, SA, 2008); “Fossils for Africa” (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Dinosaurs of Africa (RandomHouseStruik, 2021); Dinosaurs and other Prehistoric Life (Dorling Kindersley, UK, 2021).  

Dr Nathan Upham from Arizona State University will give our Tangled Banks Seminar on April 21st at 15:00. This talk will be given via zoom. Dr Upham  is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist with core interests in how species-species, species-environment, and species-pathogen interactions have evolved through time and across the tree of life. For more information, please visit his website. 

Talk title and abstract to be announced. 

Please email Dr Emma Whittington for the zoom link (emmawh@uio.no)

We are happy to announce, our Tangled Banks Seminar speaker on April 7th at 14:30 will be Professor Knud Andreas Jønsson from the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Professor Jønsson is a systematist, biogeographer and evolutionary ecologist who uses a combination of field and lab work to study the origin, dispersal, differentiation, adaptation and persistence of species' diversity and distribution.

Title and abstract TBA. 

Email Dr Emma Whittington (emmawh@uio.no) for the link. 

We are happy to introduce Dr Ariel Kahrl as our Tangled Banks speaker on Thursday, March 24th at 14:30. We expect this seminar to be held in person (location TBC).  Dr Kahrl is a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University, in the lab of John Fitzpatrick. She uses a combination of fieldwork, computational analyses, and experimental biology to study the evolution of sexually selected traits. Her talk will focus on comparative analyses of sperm morphology across taxa. 

Talk title and abstract TBA 

I am happy to announce a last-minute addition to the Tangled Banks seminar series. Dr William Jones will give a talk this Thursday (March 10^th) at 14:30. Dr William Jones is a postdoctoral researcher currently working with the ÉLVONAL Shorebird Science group, based at the University of Debrecen in Hungary. He is an evolutionary ecologist with a broad range of interests including survival and demography, host-parasite interactions and speciation. For more information please visit his website https://williamjonesresearch.wordpress.com/.   

I am excited to announce our first Tangled Banks speaker in 2022 will be Dr Murielle Ålund. Dr Ålund is a researcher based at Uppsala University in Professor Anna Qvarnström's lab.  She is interested in how changes in climate, and breeding and distribution ranges affect interactions within and between closely related species, mating behaviour, and host-parasite interactions, all contributing to the maintenance of biodiversity. For more information see her website here.

On Thursday, March 18th we welcome Dr Fabien Condamine. He will be giving a Tangled Bank seminar on "Genome-wide macroevolutionary signatures of key innovations in butterflies colonizing new host plants." More information can be found on Dr Condamine's website fabiencondamine.org/. 

On Thursday, March 4th we welcome Dr Katie Collins to the NHM. Dr Collins is based at the London Natural History Museum and will be giving the Tangled Bank seminar on her research into the geometry and diversity of mollusc shell form. 

On Thursday, February 18^th we welcome Dr Pádraic Flood to the NHM. He will be giving the Tangled Bank Seminar on “The Genetic Basis of Convergent Adaptation to Altitude in Arabidopsis thaliana”.

As a measure to prevent spread of Coronavirus the seminar has been cancelled. 

Seminar by Mario Vallejo-Marin (University of Stirling) on "Buzz pollination: The ecology and evolution of buzzing bees and vibrating flowers " and Christian Parisod (University of Bern) on "Transposons and genome evolution in natural plant populations."

Wednesday December 4th the Tangled Bank Seminar will be given by Sebastian Höhna at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München on "Estimating diversification rates from phylogenies with extinct and extant taxa". 

Wednesday November 27th the Tangled Bank Seminar will be given by Scott Lidgard at The Field Museum, Chicago (IL, USA). More information on the talk soon. 

Monday November 4th the Tangled Bank Seminar will be given by Pavel Stopka on "Proteomic architecture of chemical communication".

Tuesday October 29th the Tangled Bank Seminar will be given by Carl Simpson on "How colonial animals evolve".

Following the PhD defense of GS Seethapathy at the Department of Pharmacy, the opponents have kindly agreed to give talks in our Tangled Bank seminar series.

Tangled Bank Seminar by Johan Dahlgren (University of Southern Denmark) on "Aging in plants – what do we really know?"

Tangled Bank Seminar by Martin Grube (University of Graz) on "Lichens as models of symbiotic complexity " and Ester Gaya (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) on "What are fungi and why are they important?"

Tangled Bank Seminar by Daniel Hooper at Cornell University on "Chromosome inversions and reproductive isolation in an avian hybrid zone". 

Tangled Bank Seminar by Sylvain Glémin (University of Rennes) on "Dynamics of mating system evolution and its genomic consequences in wheat relatives (Aegilops/Triticum)" and Johanna Leppälä (Umeå University) on "Postzygotic reproductive isolation at different levels of genetic divergence". 

Tangled Bank seminar by Thom van Dooren from University of Sydney (Australia) on "A world in a shell: The disappearing snails of Hawaii"

Tangled Bank Seminar Ida M. Mienna from NTNU University Museum and on "Combining species occurrence data and molecular phylogenies can reveal hidden patterns of diversity and endemism".