III. EOU Fledglings Meeting

Mylene M. Mariette

I am a Behavioural Ecologist fascinated by the evolution of life history strategies, developmental plasticity and acoustic communication, and their implications for species persistence under global change. Recently, my work has focused on the effect of prenatal sound on development and heat adaptation strategies in desert birds.

Since graduating in 2011 from Macquarie University in Australia, I have been fortunate to secure personal research fellowships, that have allowed me to develop an innovative line of research, whilst building an extensive collaborative network. My PhD research on wild zebra finch life-history strategies established the bases for how this classic model species for genetics and neurobiology is adapted to its desert environment, and revealed the importance of parental care coordination in passerines. In my first post-doc in the bio-acoustic lab at Jean Monnet University, France, I instigated research on the role of vocal communication in parental care negotiation. I then moved back to Australia in 2013 at Deakin University, and revealed that avian parents can program the development of their offspring for high temperatures, via prenatal acoustic communication. After the publication of my results in Science (Mariette & Buchanan 2016), I led a small team of 4 PhD students and another postdoc, and together, we unraveled the impact of prenatal soundscapes on development, leading to the establishment of Acoustic Developmental Programming as a new area of research. In July 2021, I started a prestigious Ramón y Cajal Fellowship, at the Doñana Biological Station (EBD), Seville, Spain, where I am continuing to expend this line of research.

Throughout my career, I have endeavoured to communicate my findings to the public through media articles and interviews, to highlight the fascinating adaptations of animals and the challenges they now face with anthropogenic global change.

Title of my plenary talk:

The importance of prenatal soundscapes for avian development

Ádám Z. Lendvai

I am an evolutionary biologist, broadly interested in the mechanisms governing life history. My current research focuses on physiology to understand how birds cope with environmental challenges. I am particularly interested in hormonal regulation of behaviour, including the hormonal response to stress and the role that the evolutionarily conserved hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) plays in mediating life history decisions. I follow an integrated approach where I combine proximate and ultimate questions of biology.  I have studied birds in various environments from the Arctic to the tropical rainforest, although I spent a great deal of time in parking lots and horse barns as well to study house sparrows. 

Currently, I am working on a common, yet elusive passerine species in the wetlands of Hortobágy, Hungary, the bearded reedling that served as a model species to study how IGF-1 is related to growth, development of feather ornaments, energy metabolism and other hormones.

Title of my plenary talk:

IGF-1 at the crossroads of life-history trade-offs

 

a. prof. Dalia A. Conde

I am the Director of Science at Species360 (a leading data-driven conservation NGO) and Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. I completed my PhD in Ecology at Duke University before launching the Conservation Demography section at the world-renowned Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

Now, I am leading the Species360 Conservation Science Alliance. My work has been published in journals such as Science, Nature and PNAS, and Spiegel, Le Monde and National Geographic are some of the news outlets that have reported on my efforts to help save species from extinction. I am passionate about the power of open data and high-performance computing, I collaborate with a broad network of scientists, IT developers, zoos, aquariums, conservation organizations and policymakers to revolutionize evidence-based animal welfare and conservation globally.

Title of my plenary talk:

Harnessing the data revolution to help slow down the extinction rates: from basic science towards influencing global policies

 

 

 

prof. Tamás Székely

I am an evolutionary biologist interested in social behaviour, and my research skills include phylogenetic analyses, experimental and observational analyses of behaviour in wild populations, and theoretical modeling. I published over 300 peer reviewed research articles and book chapters, and 4 books, most recently on Social behaviour: genes, ecology and evolution (2010, Cambridge University Press). One of my strengths is combining different tools and approaches to understand evolution of traits such as mating systems, parental care and sexual size dimorphism. I work from genes and genomes to individuals and populations: I believe good science must be integrative.

I am primarily a researcher and a university teacher: over my full career I taught at universities and had/have teams of students, post-docs and collaborators working with me. I have supervised 33 PhD students and mentored 16 post-docs and research fellows; the vast majority are employed in academia/research institutions as professors or independent investigators. I was a visiting professor at Harvard University, University of Groningen, Bielefeld and Göttingen. I am Honorary Professor at University of Debrecen (Hungary) and was a distinguished visiting professor at Beijing Normal University (China) and Sun Yat-Sen University (China). I received a Humboldt Award, and currently I am a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder. In 2019 I was elected a Foreign Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

My current research is focusing on the evolution of mating systems, parental care and sex roles. Unlike most research groups that work in this field, I combine the mating system research with understanding of the causes and implications of adult sex ratios. In addition, I am a dedicated conservation biologist: I founded an award-winning conservation NGO in Africa (Maio Biodiversity Foundation) and coordinated the NGO’s successful conservation strategy as President until recently.

 

Title of my plenary talk:

The significance of evolutionary research for biodiversity conservation

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