Seminars

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.

About the speaker:

Karen Crow is a Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, and will be the MLML Visiting Scientist for the 2021/22 academic year. She earned a B.S. in Environmental Biology from the CSU Northridge, a M.S. in Marine Science from MLML/SFSU, a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Yale University. 

While her training and background is squarely based in evolutionary biology, her interests and research are primarily centered on EvoDevo (Evolutionary Developmental Biology). She studies the evolution of vertebrate diversity by investigating the genetic basis of variation in body plans. She has investigated the evolution of the paddlefish rostrum, barbels in fishes, novel sphincters in gobies, fin and limb modifications in batoids and other fishes, and the role of genome duplication on body plan evolution and diversity of teleosts. Because reproduction is the currency of fitness, she also investigates alternative reproductive strategies in derived vertebrates including surfperches (the only vertebrate that gives birth to "teenagers"), pipefishes (the only vertebrate that exhibits male pregnancy) , and bidirectional sex change in gobies (the ultimate in gender flexibility).

About the speaker:

Douglas McCauley is an Associate Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and the Director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative. Prof. McCauley is a Sloan Research Fellow in the Ocean Sciences and member of World Economic Forum’s Friends of Ocean Action.

Prof. McCauley has degrees in political science and biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in Biology from Stanford. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford, Princeton, and UC Berkeley. 

Prof. McCauley’s research centers upon using advances in marine science, ocean data, and marine technology to promote ocean health. Incorporating new forms of tech into ocean science is an especially important part of the DNA of research in McCauley’s laboratory. 

Research from the McCauley Lab has been published in leading research journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA and has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Time, US National Public Radio, and at the World Economic Forum.

About the speaker:

Erik C. Franklin is an Associate Research Professor at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa who leads a group focused on basic and applied ecological and fisheries research in tropical coastal and marine ecosystems to inform the sustainable management of living resources under a changing climate. His research, teaching, and mentorship involves field, lab, and computational methods including open-circuit and rebreather dive surveys, life history studies, population and stock assessments, MPA design and evaluation, and geospatial, statistical, and simulation modeling for native and invasive marine fishes, corals, invertebrates, and cetaceans with projects in Hawai‘i, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, Fiji, Indonesia, Palau, and Papua New Guinea. His work has appeared in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Fisheries Research, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Journal of Fish Biology, and Corals Reefs with a wide dissemination of results to the public through regional, national, and international newspaper articles and radio interviews. His work has been funded by the NSF, NOAA, EPA, USGS, and private foundations. Dr. Franklin is faculty in three graduate programs at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: Marine Biology, Geography and Environment, and Zoology. He also serves as a Member of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee and a Fellow of the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, an M.S. from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and a B.S. from the University of California at San Diego. When not doing the research thing, he is surfing, doing crosswords, or spending time with family. 

About the speaker:

Dr. Frank Fish is a Professor of Biology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where he has been on the faculty since 1980 and is the director of the Liquid Life Laboratory. He received a B.A. in Biology from SUNY Oswego in 1975. He completed a M.Sc. in 1977 and a Ph.D. in 1980 from the Zoology Department of Michigan State University.

Dr. Fish has published over 180 research articles, government reports, patents, and book chapters. He is currently an associate editor for the journal Marine Mammal Science and he served on the editorial board of the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

Dr. Fish's research focuses on the energetics and hydrodynamics of aquatic locomotion by vertebrate animals, including marine mammals. His research has been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Recent projects have included examinations of the evolution of swimming modes in aquatic mammals, energetics and maneuverability of aquatic animals, hydrodynamic design of biological control surfaces, biomimetic designs for propulsion, and swimming performance by marine animals for the development of bio-robots.

Dr. Fish has appeared on a number of television shows including the PBS series Evolution and the BBC production Walking with Prehistoric Beasts. His work has been highlighted in magazines, including Science, Science News, National Geographic, and Scientific American. He received the Society for Marine Mammalogy Award for Excellence in Science Communication and he was a finalist for the 2018 European Inventor Award.

About the speaker:

Darcy Taniguchi is an Assistant Professor at CSU San Marcos. Her research explores the characterization and response of marine communities and organisms to varying environmental conditions and interactions. Most of her work focuses on understanding planktonic communities. She received her BA in Mathematics and BS in Biology from UC San Diego and received her MS and PhD in Biological Oceanography from UC San Diego. 

About the speaker:

Seth Newsome is the Associate Director of the University of New Mexico (UNM) Center for Stable Isotopes and an Associate Professor in the UNM Biology Department. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1999, a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2005 (primary advisor: Paul Koch), and held two postdoctoral positions before arriving at UNM: the first with Marilyn Fogel at the Carnegie Institution for Science and the second with Carlos Martinez del Rio and Dave Williams at the University of Wyoming. Besides science and fixing mass spectrometers, he enjoys mountain biking, rafting, and fly fishing.

Dr. Lesley Thorne is an Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. Born and raised in Kingston, Ontario in Canada, Lesley received a BSc (Honours) at the University of Guelph and a PhD from Duke University in North Carolina. She has worked in a wide range of marine systems, including the Bay of Fundy, the South Atlantic Bight, the Sargasso Sea, the western Antarctic Peninsula, and the Main and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Lesley is broadly interested in ecological questions in coastal and pelagic systems, and much of her research focuses on understanding links between environmental variability, foraging behavior and population processes, and on elucidating biophysical interactions driving the habitat use and foraging ecology of different marine predators.

Dr. Joe Pawlik is a Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at UNCW. He received his BS in 1982 from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and his PhD in Marine Biology in 1988 from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD.  He joined the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at UNCW in 1991, where he teaches undergraduate courses in Invertebrate Zoology and Biodiversity, teaches Introduction to Science as a Profession to graduate students, and directs a research program involving undergrad, MS and PhD students. Joe worked at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Program Officer in the Biological Oceanography Program for 2 years beginning 2003. He and his students and collaborators have authored over 160 publications, primarily on the ecology of sponges on Caribbean coral reefs. Check out a list of his publications here.

James (Jim) Cloern is a senior scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. His research over four decades addresses comparative ecology and biogeochemistry of estuaries to understand how they respond as ecosystems to climatic-hydrologic variability and human disturbance. His team investigation of San Francisco Bay included studies of primary production, nutrient cycling, algal and zooplankton community dynamics, ecosystem metabolism and food web dynamics, disturbance by introduced species, ecosystem restoration, and past and projected future responses to a changing climate. His career achievements have been recognized with selection as Fellows of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and as recipient of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution B.H. Ketchum Award, Delta Science Program Brown-Nichols Achievement Award, ASLO Ruth Patrick Award, Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Odum Lifetime Achievement Award, and Department of Interior's Distinguished Service Award. He is currently an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a member of the Delta Stewardship Council's Independent Science Board, and editor-in-chief of Limnology and Oceanography Letters.