Open science and "Encyclopedia of Life" - competition for projects

As we all know, our research field (ecology and evolutionary biology) are becoming increasing data-driven and to an increasing extent we are also using data collected by "others" from various internet sources. One such example is our recent paper in Ecology, where we used GBIF-data from thousands of species occurrence records, including from the Swedish source "Artportalen" ("The Species Portal") to model  and understand the environmental factors behind northern range limits in two Fennoscandian demoiselle species (the genus Calopteryx). 

Increasingly, evolutionary biologists interested in organismal biology and phenotypic evolution will use phenotypic data from sources like DRYAD, as has already been used for a long time for molecular data (DNA-sequences), where GenBank is now a common source of information when constructing phylogenies for comparative purposes. Thus, researchers will not only rely on data they have collected themselves (which is often expensive and it is logistically impossible to gather more than a limited amount of data in short time), but can to an increasing extent also use data from public open databases such as GBIF.

Now, another such initiative - Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) - announces a competition for project proposals (deadline November 15). One can propose data-driven projects - a "wish list" - of what kind of data one wants and in what form, and the "best" projects will be realized. This might be an opportunity for someone in our lab (Lesley?), provided that we can come up with a good project proposal to enter this competition. Think about it at least  until November 15.  

Odonates would be an example of a group where distribution data collected from amateur naturalists should ideally be compiled and become available for research projects through open databases. Unfortunately, the odonate research community is small, full of rivalry and have an unfortunate tradition of publishing in low-impact journals. Some odonate researchers and self-appointed experts are also extremely territorial about their collected occurrence data. This type of territoriality certainly hinders scientific progress and the establishment of odonates as respectable model organisms in ecology and evolutionary biology. Science should be characterized by openness and data-sharing - not by rivalry. 

Dr. Yuma Takahashi receives postdoctoral scholarship from Japan to join our lab

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Yuma Takahashi from Japan has been awarded a three-year postdoctoral scholarship, and will join our laboratory in 2012. Yuma received his doctorate degree at University of Tsukuba and in his thesis work he studied female colour polymorphism, frequency-dependent selection and evolutionary dynamics of the damselfly Ischnura senegalensis. You can read more about Yuma's research here. His study organism (I. senegalenis) is a small coenagrionid damselfly is closely related to Ischnura elegans, which we have studied in our lab.

There are many interesting similarities, but also difference between these two polymorphic species. One major difference, though, is that Ischnura senegalensis has only two female morphs, not three as in Ischnura elegans. Another interesting ecological difference is that the male mimicking androchrome females are often in minority in I. senegalensis, or at least not much more than 50 % of the female population, whereas this female morph is often the most common morph in I. elegans (at least in Sweden where we have mainly studied it). These interesting ecological species differences will hopefully be understood better and be explored after Yuma joins our lab in 2012.

Yuma has already published eight papers from his thesis-work and here I would just like to point to his latest one, which recently appeared in the journal Evolution. Using a powerful combination of field observations and experiments and simulation modelling, they elegantly illustrated the evolutionary dynamics of this polymorphic system which strongly suggest that this dynamic is most likely the result of frequency-dependent sexual conflict interactions, caused by male-female antagonistic mating interactions. In short: males develop a "search image" for common female morphs, and common morphs become differentially sexually harassed, resulting in an inverse relationship between a morph's fitness and its frequency in the population, which leads to negative frequency-dependent selection (NFDS), a very powerful evolutionary mechanism to maintain genetic polymorphisms. 

These findings and conclusions by Yuma and his co-workers are very similar to our paper on I. elegans that we published in 2005 in American Naturalist. It is of course nice to see that the genus Ischnura continues to generate interesting studies and inspire evolutionary biologists in different countries, including Japan. As an aside, the next international dragonfly conferences (WDA) will also take place in Japan, south of Tokyo between July 31 and August 5 2011. I am very happy and flattered to become invited as a plenary speaker to this rather small meeting of odonate enthusiasts, amateurs, naturalists and researchers.

Below is the Abstract and link to Yuma's article in Evolution, for those who are interested in reading more about this fascinating species and study system:

Negative frequency-dependent selection in female colour polymorphism of a damselfly (Evolution 2010 64: 3620-3628)

Takahashi, Yuma, Yoshimura, Jin), Morita, Satoru) & Watanabe, Mamoru

Abstract: Negative frequency-dependent selection (NFDS) is one of the most powerful selective forces maintaining genetic polymorphisms in nature. Recently many prospective cases of polymorphisms by NFDS have been reported. Some of them are very complicated, although strongly supportive of the NFDS. Here we investigate NFDS in wild populations of the dimorphic damselfly Ischnura senegalensis, in which females occur as andromorphs and gynomorphs. Specifically, we (1) test fitness responses to morph frequencies, (2) built a simple population genetic model, and (3) compare the observed and predicted morph-frequency dynamics. Fitnesses of the two morphs are an inverse function of its own frequency in a population, and are about equal when their frequencies are similar. Thus the conditions necessary for NFDS are satisfied. The long-term field surveys show that the morph frequencies oscillate with a period of two generations. Morph frequencies in a small population undergo large oscillations whereas those in a large population do small oscillations. The demographic properties of the observed dynamics agree well with those of our model. This example is one of the simplest confirmed cases of NFDS maintaining genetic polymorphisms in nature.

Seminar about conservation biology in South Africa on September 15

 

This coming Wednesday (15 September), PhD-student John Simaika from Stellenbosch University in South Africa will give a presentation about conservation biology entitled:

"Advances in monitoring and prioritizing riverine habitats for conservation using biotic indices with special emphasis on South Africa."

John is a PhD-student of Professor Mike Samways, who is head of the Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology in Stellenbosch. Samways and his students have especially studied the conservation biology of rare, endemic and threatened odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) and developed various habitat restoration strategies to increase the population sizes of some rare species.

Prof. Samways and I have recently initiated a research collaboration and an exchange programme between Lund and Stellenbosch Universities, that was launched earlier this year and will run for the coming three years. John is here for a short visit as part of this programme. I will announce this seminar also to people outside our lab-group. Time and place as usual:

"Darwin" on September 15, 10.15.

Please spread the word about this talk to all other interested students and researchers in the Ecology Building!

Seminar by Jessica Ware on dragonfly phylogenetics, systematics and evolution

This coming Wednesday (March 3, 2010), I am pleased to welcome Dr. Jessica Ware, who is currently a NSF-funded postdoctoral scholar at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (USA). Dr. Ware obtained her thesis at Rutgers University in New Jersey, under the supervision of Professor Mike May, and she is currently a NSF-funded postdoctoral scholar at the invertebrate section of the American Museum of Natural History. Her main research interests are phylogenetics and evolution of odonates, particularly dragonflies, and she uses molecular methods to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and ancestral character states, particularly in Libelluloid dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera).

Jessica has also collaborated recently with conservation biologist Prof. Michael J. Samways at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, on the evolutionary history of south african odonates, a researcher which I also recently have obtained a collaborative research grant with from SIDA/VR. You can find a list of Jessica's publications here.

Jessica will give an informal presentation of her research on the lab-meeting this Wednesday, at the usual time (March 3, 10.15) and place ("Darwin Room"). Do not miss this exciting opportunity to learn more about systematics, phylogeny reconstruction, comparative methods and dragonfly evolutionary biology!

Pictures from the Okavango Delta and Botswana

You might remember that I did an exploratory trip to northern Botswana and the Okavango Delta last winter, with the aim to find some interesting odonate systems for future research. As I have applied for some research grants to work in this fascinating region, I hope that I will be able to return to do some directed and systematic studies in the future.

I have now put up some pictures from this trip on the web, which you can see here. Enjoy!