Minisymposium May 24 2012: "Biogeography and Evolution"

We are happy to announce an exciting Minisymposium entitled "Biogeography and Evolution" on May 24 2012 that will take place on the afternoon the day preceeding Anna Runemarks PhD-thesis defence (May 25). We have four excellent speakers that will present some exciting talks this afternoon. This symposium is open for everyone, whether from the Biology Department of from elsewhere. Full details of the programme and the titles of the talks are presented below:

Minisymposium on Biogeography and 

Evolution

                 

May 24, 13.00 - 16.00                               

"Blue Hall", Ecology Building, Department of Biology, Lund

13.00-13.40 Scott V. Edwards (Harvard University, USA)  “The phylogeography-phylogenetics continuum: a look to the future”

13.50-14.20 Jessica Ware (Rutgers University, USA) "Here be dragons: biodgeography and age of Petaluridae, the petaltail dragonflies"

14.30-14.50 Coffee

14.50 - 15.20 Alexandre Antonelli (Gothenburg University, Sweden) "Ecology meets Biogeography: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Study Neotropical Diversification"

15.30- 15.50 Folmer Bokma (Umeå University, Sweden) ”Why species may not adapt”

15.50 - 16.00 Discussion and concluding remarks

Symposium open for all interested. No registration required.

Welcome!


Bengt Hansson, Anna Runemark & Erik Svensson

New PhD-thesis from the lab: Anna Runemark and evolution on islands

Posted by Erik Svensson

Some of the proudest moments in the careers and life of advisors come when their students successfully finish their PhD-theses. Now it is time again, this time for Anna Runemark, who will defend her PhD-thesis on Friday May 25 in the "Blue Hall" (Ecology Building, Department of Biology) at 09.30. The thesis defence is open to all interested, as with all PhD-thesis defences at our university.

The Science Faculty's external opponent is Professor Scott Edwards from Harvard University. The examination committé consists of Drs. Alexandre Antonelli (Gothenburg University, Sweden), Folmer Bokma (Umeå University, Sweden) and Jessica Ware (Rutgers University, USA). On May 24 (Thursday, the day before Anna's thesis defence), we will have a small and informal research symposium with the opponent and the members of the thesis-committé entitled "Island Biology and Evolution", which will start at 13.00 in the "Blue Hall" (Ecology Building).

The title of the thesis is "Island biogeography and population divergence in the Skyros wall lizard". You can find a Swedish summary of the thesis here, and here is the link to the entire thesis, for those of you work at Lund University.

On a more personal note, Anna Runemark is my fifth PhD-student, preceeded by Jessica Abbott (2006), Thomas Gosden (2008), Fabrice Eroukhmanoff (2009) and Kristina ("Tina") Karlsson-Green (2010). I am proud of all these students, and I have learnt tremendously much from being an advisor of these five PhD-theses. Above all, I have learnt that there is not one way of being a good advisor or a good student - but many. 

There is thus no single "magic formula" to do an excellent PhD-thesis, but many different avenues. In a way, one could compare the writing of a thesis with the hill-climbing process on Sewall Wright's Adaptive Landscape: there are multiple adaptive peaks (excellent theses) and many different combinations of skills that make a good thesis. There are also many different kinds of students, each with different social and intellectual backgrounds, personalities, skills and interests. 

Equally, there are many different ways of a being a good advisor, and being a good advisor or a good student is, in itself, no guarantee for success. It is rather the combination of advisor and student that is crucial. One could perhaps compare this with the concept of genetic compatability in sexual selection: some combinations are less fit than others, even if the component parts (genes, advisors, students) do not differ and are excellent in isolation. 


The ideal student-advisor relationship is one of complementarity and mutual respect for each other's skills: The advisor provides the broader overview, theoretical and conceptual background and helps the student to see "the Big Picture" of the work, and forces the student to keep looking at the horizon, rather than dwelling in to methodological details. The student, on the other hand, should develop his/her methodological and technical skills and become "good" at it, and work to build his/her understanding of scientific concepts and how the thesis work can contribute to increased understanding of the natural world. I feel that Anna's thesis about a classical topic in evolutionary biology (evolution on islands) exemplifies this type of advisor-student collaboration that characterizes an excellent PhD-thesis.   

Greetings from Austin (Texas)

Posted by Erik Svensson

After about two weeks in Texas, around its capital Austin, I am heading home to Sweden again, after a very nice visit to my colleagues at Section for Integrative Biology at University of Texas. This department is certainly one of the strongest in ecology, evolution and behaviour in the US, and I can strongly recommend a visit here. Interestingly, they do not have any bird research at all, but most empirical work is on fish on insects, and the department is particularly strong in animal behaviour, sexual selection, neurobiology and evolutionary population genetics. This is the second time I visit, and I gave a talk already in spring 2003, nine years ago. Remarkably, almost all who attended my talk then were here this time as well, including Mark Kirkpatrick, Mike Ryan and legendary lizard evolutionary ecologist Eric Pianka.

I also met with some new folks, which have arrived since 2003, including PhD student Eben Gehring who works in the lab of Molly Cummings, and who does research on Ischnura-damselflies and evolutionary ecology professor Dan Bolnick, with whom I share many research interests, including the evolution of assortative mating and its consequences. Tonight, I am going to dinner with Scott Edwards, who is also visiting from Harvard this same week as I am here, and who will be the opponent of PhD-student Anna Runemark in our lab on May 25 next month.

Apart from Monday, this week, when I gave my talk, I have spent most time in the field, looking for and researching on Texas odonates. You can see one particularly stunning species that I saw here. Texas is especially species-rich, as half of North America's species occur here, more than 250 species, and several tropical elements from Mexico and Central America. As a comparision, Sweden has about 55 species, less than a fifth of Texas (although it should be said that Texas is slightly bigger than Sweden - everything is bigger in Texas, actually!). It is good to keep in mind that biodiversity is quite low in Europe, mainly due to the effects of past ice ages, and perhaps our faunas have not yet even been saturated, as re-colonziation from the last Ice Age might still be ongoing?