Biology

TidyTuesday provides an opportunity to learn, practice, and explore coding and data analysis. Whatever your skill level, you are welcome here. This is a judgment free space to try things out, experiment, and play with data.

Have you ever heard the story of the Middlebury River? What about Lake Dunmore? In this informal session, students from BIOL 304: Aquatic Ecology will be sharing the work they’ve done this semester to tell the stories of various aquatic ecosystems in Vermont based on concepts we’ve learned in class over the semester.

Living in a toxic world: Mechanisms of internal salt-sensing in C. elegans

Animals are exquisitely sensitive to salt concentrations in both their external and internal environments. While we now have a good understanding of how we taste salt, the mechanisms by which internal salt levels are sensed remain poorly described. This talk will describe recent work from the lab on the identification of a new pathway by which a single gut neuron in C. elegans detects ingested salts and protects the animal against high salt stress.

Population Ecology and Diseases of Fishers in the Northeastern USA

Our work currently includes: (1) comparative microbial ecology focusing on the emergence of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance on farms – with plans to expand our focus; (2) emerging infectious disease discovery; and (3) wildlife disease ecology. 

Bugs in Motion: Insect behavior in the lab & on YouTube

Forty Million Years of Dogs: Deep-Time Insights on Predator Evolution and Extinction

Using genomics to reveal the mechanisms of resilience: Studies of global change adaptation and sea star wasting disease.

In this talk, I will discuss how we integrate genomic approaches with the ecology and evolution of interesting, ecologically foundational marine organisms to understand if and how they respond to stressors such as ocean warming, ocean acidification, and pathogens. We use field sampling, common garden studies, and experimental evolution to shed light on the mechanisms of resilience in a rapidly changing world. 

This will be a wide-ranging talk exploring the insights and challenges of practicing applied science and utilizing decision theory to aid natural resource management. I’ll begin with an overview of my career, an explanation of structured decision making, and the flavors of applied science I practice. From there, based on audience interest, I will provide greater detail on some selected applications and case studies of interest.

Hold the Salt: Salinity Influences Structure and Function of Streams Across North America

Most inland waters are defined by their low salinity relative to the oceans. However, both geological and anthropogenic processes can lead to freshwater salinization. This talk will summarize work done by Eric Moody and his research students at Middlebury College using ecological stoichiometry as a framework to study the causes and consequences of freshwater salinization in streams and rivers across North America.

Biology Seminar, Saul Lecture - Dr. Vincent Lynch, University of Buffalo

Cancer, aging, Peto’s paradox

Evolutionary theory predicts that large animals, because they have more cells than smaller ones should have higher cancer prevalence than the small ones; similarly long-lived animals, which have a long time to acquire cancer causing mutations should have higher cancer prevalence than short lived ones but do not. In fact the cancer prevalence in mammals averages 50-10%. What mechanisms underlie this apparent disconnect between theory and observation?