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Info DEE # 24 - Jan./Feb. 2021
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WELCOME TO OUR NEW COLLEAGUES
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Dr Ricardo Arraiano Castilho joined the group of Prof. Ian Sanders as Postdoctoral fellow. Ricardo is (will be) located in office 4314, phone 42.72. Ricardo.ArraianoCastilho@unil.ch
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Dr Marina Braso Vives joined the group of Prof. Marc Robinson-Rechavi as Postdoctoral fellow. Marina is (will be) located in office 3214, phone 42.04. Marina.BrasoVives@unil.ch
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Ms Laura Carrara will join the group of Dr Luca Fumagalli for an internship of a few months. Laura will be located in office 3206.1, phone 42.06. Laura.Carrara@unil.ch
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We are also glad to count on the help of new student-assistants: Ms Inès Moreno and Ms Sarah Monod (who both work at our animal house), Mr Alexander Jann (Pannell group), Mr Sammy Sakhri (Keller group), Ms Zoé Sherpa (Bertelsmeier group). Welcome to them too.
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The Conservation Career Day 2021, co-organized by Eléonore Genzoni (DEE), Giulia Perroud (DEE), Prof. Gretchen Walters (IGD), Dr Luca Fumagalli (DEE) and Prof. Antoine Guisan (DEE) will be held on Monday March 8th 2021, Online (Zoom link: https://unil.zoom.us/j/91862820229). The program can be found here.
Registrations are opened, but not necessary to attend only the main conference given this year by Dr. PJ Stephenson (DEE).
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Ana-Paula Machado (Goudet & Roulin’s group) and Eléonore Lavanchy (Goudet’s group) flew the colors of DEE at the Population Genetics Group meeting (Liverpool, January 4th-6th ) by winning respectively the price for one of the three best student talks and for one of the three best posters. Ana showed, using a mixture of species distribution modelling in the past, genomic analysis and demographic modelling, that barn owls colonized the British Isles before the last glacial maximum, and before continental Europe was recolonized, which also help explain why British barn owls are whiter than those from continental Europe at the same latitude. Eléonore’s poster demonstrated why using reduced genomic representation, such as RAD-seq, rather than Whole Genome Sequencing is inappropriate for measuring inbreeding in terms of Runs of Homozygosity (ROHs). Congratulations to both!
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To better understand the behaviours and beliefs related to owls, Professors Alexandre Roulin and Christine Mohr (Faculty of Social and Political Science), have launched a very large scale study. One of the goals is to identify whether representations of these birds, whether positive or negative, vary from one country to another. See the UNIL Press release where you will find the link to participate to the questionaire.
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Dr Erik Frank, (Keller group) was interviewed by the french radio station France Inter about his book "Combattre, sauver, soigner - Une histoire de fourmis". The book was published on Sept. 24th 2020 by CNRS editions. See the UNIL Press release.
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With colleagues from South Africa, La Réunion and Hungary, Tamara Szentivanyi (Christe group) published an article in the Journal Parasite (together with Eleonore Genzoni and Laurie Ançay (PhD Students in the Keller group and Roulin group) and also with Laura Clement (former PhD Student of the Christe group) and Loic Brun (former master student). The article presents the results of a study performed during Tamara's PhD entitled: Host conservation through their parasites: molecular surveillance of vector-borne microorganisms in bats using ectoparasitic bat flies. They showed that infectious microorganism infecting bats may be identify by the molecular analysis of their ectoparasites, which is an alternative, less invasive sampling method than blood sampling.
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Prof. Erica van de Waal published a book chapter with her colleague Dr Lydia Lunz at the Oxford University, entitled "Cultural Transmission in Dispersing Primates". The chapter was published in the book Chimpanzees in Context. The chapter aims to show that Immigration in animals has been proven to be an interesting phenomenon where information on adaptation to local group norms can be directly observed. The authors compare the behavior of wild primates during migration events. They concentrate their comparisons on observational data in wild chimpanzees from the Tai National Park in the Ivory Coast and field experiments in vervet monkeys from the Inkawu Vervet Project in South Africa. The cross-species comparisons revealed that both primate species show conformist behavior mechanism, where they abandon the knowledge that they previously had learned in their native group before dispersal and adopt the behavior displayed throughout their new group. The authors argue that other animal species, beyond the primate lineage, show similar social learning phenomenon when dispersing, highlighting the possibility that migration events trigger conformity throughout the animal kingdom.
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Dr Charlotte Canteloup, Prof. Erica van de Waal published, with colleagues in France and Norway, a new study in the American Journal of Primatology. The study talks about consistency of individual centrality across time and networks in the wild vervet monkeys within the Inkawu Vervet Project in South Africa. The authors studied grooming, aggression and play networks of a group of wild vervet monkeys over 2 periods of 6 months. While most studies recorded data only on adults, the authors also recorded data on juveniles. They found that higher ranked animals were more central in aggression and grooming networks, and females were more central in aggression and grooming networks than males, especially when the group included few adult males. Juvenile males were the more central in the play network, having more playmates, playing more, and being connected to other central conspecifics than females. Individuals were consistent in their network position across years despite changes in group composition. The findings concur with previous work on this species, despite different data collection methods and show that individuals' network centralities may vary among networks and over time; thus highlighting the effect of sociodemographics and behaviors' functions on the group level dynamics of social behavior.
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Prof. Cleo Bertelsmeier published an article in Current Opinion in Insect Science entitled Globalization and the anthropogenic spread of invasive social insects. Social insects are among the worst invasive species and a better understanding of their anthropogenic spread is needed. I highlight recent research demonstrating that social insects have been dispersed since the early beginnings of globalized trade and in particular after the Industrial Revolution, following two waves of globalization. Many species have complex invasion histories, with multiple independent introduction events and frequent secondary spread. The major source and recipient regions differ markedly across ants, wasps, termites and bees, probably linked to their different introduction pathways. At a more local scale, anthropogenic factors such as irrigation, urbanization or the presence of railways facilitate invasions. In the future, social insect invasions could further accelerate due to intensifying global trade and novel introduction pathways.
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As a result of natural selection, female plants deprived of their males become hermaphroditic in record time, allowing them to continue to reproduce and pass on their genes. This is the result of a study carried out in gardens of the Canton of Vaud by Prof. John Pannell and former PhD Students (Guillaume Cossard, Jörn Gerchen, Xinji Li) and former lab technician (Yves Cuenot) at the Department of Ecology and Evolution of UNIL and published in the journal Current Biology. See the Unil Press Release.
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Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from microorganisms to animals is known to confer important adaptive advantages. In insects these have to date been found to be primarily involved in enabling plant-feeders to digest their meals. In a collaborative research project on beetle genomics, Prof. Robert Waterhouse and colleagues discovered a set of bacterial cell wall hydrolase genes that have been acquired by a subset of ladybird beetles, published in BMC Biology. These genes produce enzymes for which experimental evidence in the ladybirds demonstrates antibacterial activity. They have been maintained in all 38 tested ladybird species, suggesting that this putative immune-related HGT event played a role in the evolution of this speciose subfamily of predatory ladybirds. In a manner analogous to HGT-facilitated plant feeding, enhanced immunity through HGT might have played a key role in the prey adaptation and niche expansion that promoted the diversification of carnivorous beetle lineages.
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Former and current PhD Students of the Sanders group (Ricardo Pena, Chanz Robbins and Joaquim Cruz Corella) published an article in Frontiers in Plant Science, entitled Genetically Different Isolates of the Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus Rhizophagus irregularis Induce Differential Responses to Stress in Cassava. Cassava is cultivated more and more in suboptimal conditions in Africa where it experiences frequent drought. In collaboration with Kenyan, Colombian and EPFL partners, the authors showed that by inoculating cassava with different mycorrhizal fungi, it is possible to change their tolerance to drought in the field in Kenya.
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Congratulations to our colleague, Falon Pasquier falon.pasquiergenoud@unil.ch, who replaced Jason Buser as animal Keeper in Chief at our animal house. Recruitment for an other animal Keeper to assist Falon is on its course.
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There is a new Postdocs representative at the DEE Council meeting, Dr Erica Mc Gale (along with Dr Florent Mazel), in replacement of Mathieu Chevalier who will soon leave the DEE. We wish the best to Mathieu and are happy to welcome Erica at the Council.
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IT Support: from January 2021 in case of machine failure contact the helpdesk : helpdesk@unil.ch, always provide the inventory number of your machine (see the blue UNIL stiker on your computer). For any question related to orders, website, DEE mailing lists, for the moment contact Marlene : marlene.petit@unil.ch
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