Month: September 2021

About the speaker:

Heather Liwanag is an Associate Professor of Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is interested in the physiological adaptations of animals to their environment, and the evolutionary processes involved in those adaptations. Much of her research has focused on thermoregulation (the regulation of body temperature) and energetics (metabolic rates) in vertebrate animals, including seals, sea lions, and even lizards. She has been fortunate to work with an amazing group of people (Team B-030) on this recent project, studying the early development of Weddell seal pups in Antarctica.

About the speaker:

Dr. Jonathan Warrick is a Research Geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, California, where he studies the movement of sediment in rivers and in the sea.  Jon has led efforts to characterize the outcomes of the world’s largest dam removal project on the Elwha River, and his work has been featured in multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Outside Magazine, and the nationally broadcast CBS Evening News.  Jon received a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the UCSB in 2002 and has authored or co-authored over 90 peer reviewed science articles, reports and book chapters and has contributed to or presented over 150 scientific presentations and guest lectures.

About the speaker:

After growing up on a sheep farm in upstate NY, Sean received undergraduate degrees from SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell and his PhD from UC Santa Cruz, where he studied marine mammal physiology and behavior. After years in academia, Sean found his true passion lies in civil service when he joined the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2001. He has since worked on a broad range of challenges and species from pinnipeds to salmon to seabirds and cetaceans. His science experiences have taken him across the country from NMFS offices in Hawaii, California and Oregon, to serving under the NOAA Chief Scientist in Washington DC. In 2016, Sean became the Protected Species Branch Chief at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he works with teams leading the center’s ESA and MMPA research portfolio which includes salmon, marine mammals and sea-turtles. He is currently enjoying a ‘sweet spot’ in his career, where he remains engaged with the science but is able to affect change at higher levels. In this capacity, he is working to focus scientific effort on the ecological challenges of our marine resources in order to remove the ambiguity around stakeholder concerns, thus enabling managers and stakeholders to make scientifically informed decisions to ensure sustainability of our marine resources. He is also enjoying being much closer to his family farm in NY and exploring life in his home on beautiful Cape Cod with his pups, wife, and new daughter.

About the speaker:

Tom received a BA from Wabash College (1966) and served in the US Army from 1966-1969. He received a PhD in Botany from the University of Washington (1973) then spent three years at UBC on a postdoctoral fellowship before joining the Washington Department of Natural Resources in 1976. At WDNR he researched the cultivation of seaweeds for the production of phycolloids and food, and developed and managed programs for management and inventory of seaweeds and seagrasses on state-owned aquatic lands. He served on the Nearshore Science Team for the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Project. He has taught in various universities and consulted overseas in seaweed aquaculture. Since his retirement in 2011, he is focusing on researching marine algal biodiversity, the role of kelp in marine ecosystems, on kelp restoration, and on teaching. He was lead biologist for an ARPA-E project to grow kelp for biomass and currently is the biologist for the ARPA-E grant “ UNrealized Critical Lanthanide Extraction via Sea Algae Mining (UNCLE-SAM): Domestic production of critical minerals from seawater”. He helped in developing the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan, and acts in an advisory role for the NW Straits Commission and Pew Trust grant “Kelp conservation through coordinated management and science”. He sits as an alternate on the Strategic Advisory Council for the OCNMS and is on the Science Advisory Committee for the NW Straits Initiative.

Check out his websites here and here.

Talk synopsis:

Sirtuins are regulators of the proteome by modifying metabolic enzymes, chaperones and anti-oxidative stress proteins to improve the response of organisms to several environmental stressors.  We tested their role in two marine mussel species that vary in their response to heat and salinity stress.  A key question for integrative biology is if these molecular differences affect phenotypes at higher levels of organismal organization.  We tested this assumption while simultaneously monitoring the molecular changes accompanying changes in ciliary activity, particle velocity of the gill, a feeding organ in mussels, and whole organism filtration rates.  The presentation will discuss the challenges of doing integrative biology.