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Info DEE # 15 - March & April 2020
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A FEW WORDS FROM THE DIRECTOR
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As we enter uncertain times, with the SARS-Cov-2 outbreak, I would like to thank everyone in the department for quickly adapting to the new work situation. I fully realise that working from home will pose difficulties for many of you and, together with all the group leaders, we will do what we can to ensure that you can do as much as possible from home. As we get used to this new situation, we will try and give you as much information as possible in order to try and make a working DEE life without physically being in the Biophore. If you have any suggestions about this don’t hesitate to contact me or Marlène.
I would also like to thank a number of dedicated members of the DEE for quickly putting together an essential plan of access for staff required to do essential tasks that will allow us to correctly maintain the animals, plants and microorganisms (many of which require special care) for ongoing and future experiments. This was quite a task as our department works on a very large number of different non-model organisms, which is not the case for most other departments. Also, a big thanks to those who have collected urgently needed material (masks, gloves, etc) that have already been transferred to CHUV, along with contributions from the other biology departments. Finally, a big thanks to the contribution by those DEE members who have been called up by the military to provide extra specialist support in this time. Many people have mailed me with suggestions about what more the DEE can do. Obviously, our biggest contribution at this time is to isolate ourselves at home and reduce the possibilities for viral transmission to a minimum to help reduce transmission and new infections below the exponential rate.
Keep safe and keep healthy !!
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WELCOME TO OUR NEW COLLEAGUES
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Ms Tess Baticle joined the group of Prof. Roman Arguello as Lab technician. Tess is located in office 2205, phone 56.15. Tess.Baticle@unil.ch
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Mr Andrei Dascalu joined the group of Prof. Laurent Keller for the month of March as Lab technician.
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Ms Charlotte Griessen joined the group of Professor Ian Sanders as Lab technician to work with Dr Anurag Chaturvedi and Dr Soon-Jae Lee on a Spark project. Charlotte is located in office 4314, phone 42.72. Charlotte.Griessen@unil.ch
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Ms Anne-Caroline Heintz joined the group of Professor Alexandre Roulin as field assistant. Anne Caroline Heintz is located in office 3206, phone 42.18. Anne-Caroline.Heintz@unil.ch
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Ms Emily Kaiser joined the master program in Behavior Evolution and Conservation (BEC) as administrative Assistant (at 20% Thursday-Friday). She provides administrative support to the two Directors of the program (Prof. Tadeusz Kawecki and Prof. Jérôme Goudet) to run it and implement the developments stemming from the recent self-evaluation of the program. Emily is located in office 3106, phone 42.44. Emily.Kaiser@unil.ch
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Dr Florent Mazel joined the group of Professor Antoine Guisan as Postdoctoral fellow. Florent will be located in office 4301.1, phone 42.69. Florent.Mazel@unil.ch
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Ms Iris Prigent joined the group of Professor Charles Mullon as PhD Student. Iris is located in office 1116, phone 42.67. Iris.Prigent@unil.ch
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Ms Solenn Sarton-Lohéac joined the group of Professor John Pannell as Lab technician. Solenn will be located in office 4310, phone 41.82. Solenn.Sarton-Loheac@unil.ch
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Mr Alexandros Topaloudis joined the group of Professor Jérôme Goudet as junion SNF Researcher. Alexandros is located in office 4323, phone 42.43. Alexandros.Topaloudis@unil.ch
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During the shutdown of the University, external Seminars are suspended.
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The responsibles for internal Seminars are working on technical solutions in order to maintain remote internal Seminars during. You will receive more information soon.
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HIGHLIGHTS
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Congratulations to Prof. Cleo Bertelsmeier and Dr Luca Fumagalli for recently obtaining a competitive research funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Cleo Bertelsmeier's project studies the impact of globalization on insect invasions. The aim of the project is to (1) investigate what drives global species flows; 2) to test if trade blocs shape current species distributions and (3) to find out which commodities transport invasive species. Luca Fumagalli's project studies the improvment of eDNA approaches for next generation basic research and monitoring. The aim of the project is to develope and validate a novel eDNA hybridisation capture probe tool aiming at unbiased representation of arthropod and plant taxa in environmental samples.
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In collaboration with L'Eprouvette, Prof. Erica van de Waal and her Postdoc Dr Rachel Harrison created a workshop for children to participate in research around the them of behavioural similarities between humans and monkeys.
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Dr Luca Fumagalli was interviewed by the RTS in Couleurs locales about wolf population in Switzerland and lab analyses conducted in the LBC. You can see the interview here.
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Congratulations to Tamara Szentivanyi from the group of Prof. Christe who defended her thesis on February 28th entitled: Three levels of trophic interactions: bats, ectoparasites and their microparasites.
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Prof. Robert Waterhouse published a book chapter with Brian Lazzaro (Cornell) and Timothy Sackton (Harvard) on “Characterization of Insect Immune Systems from Genomic Data” in the book “Immunity in Insects”. Insect immune responses are orchestrated by the products of a suite of genes responsible for pathogen recognition, signal transduction, and pathogen killing. They present step-by-step protocols for the identification and annotation of genes that comprise the immune system from newly sequenced insect genomes
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A study led by Dr Andrea Romano, of the Prof. Alexandre Roulin group, analyzed the spatial variation in the diet of the cosmopolitan barn owl according to climatic and geographic factors. By comparing different types of prey used by this raptor in more than 950 locations across the globe, the study indicates generalized pattern of variation in several diet components (e.g. proportion of mammals, prey size and diversity) across biogeographical regions, suggesting that different barn owl populations living in similar climate convergently evolved similar food preferences and hunting strategies. It was published in Journal of Biogeography.
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A paper published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution by members of the group of Prof. Philippe Christe presents results based on the molecular characterization of trypanosome isolates obtained from 1493 bats representing 74 species and sampled over 16 countries across four continents. The results of this study indicate that trypanosomes of the T. cruzi clade contain more species and are phylogenetically more diverse than previously reported, especially in the Old World, and this high diversity warrants further surveys and taxonomic scrutiny. The discovery of new Trypanosoma parasites in African and European bats give new insights into the evolutionary history of the T. cruzi and underscores the importance of thorough sampling when assessing the origin of epidemics of pathogens or parasites. Ancestral analyses reconstruction in accordance with the high diversity of Trypanosoma parasites in Sub- Saharan Africa and the basal position of the new taxa suggest that most clades have evolved in an African bat ancestor.
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Despite the partial closing of the Biophore and campus, the DEEers community is still very active, even if from home. If you feel tired of confinement and need to socialize, reach out to your group members, or other people in the DEE, by phone, email, WhatsApp or any other social medium. It's always nice to share a bit of time with colleagues.
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