Seminarji Oddelka za biodiverziteto

V četrtek 25. oktobra 2023, bo izveden 2. seminar iz morskih vsebin.

ČAS in PROSTOR: Predavanje bo potekalo v Livadah 1.0 (Livade 6, Izola), predavalnica Epsilon (pritličje), od 12. do 13. ure. 

Tinkara Tinta is a marine microbiologist studying the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on microbial community dynamics in marine ecosystems. Her research is interdisciplinary and draws on the background in biochemistry (BSc) and her area of expertise – marine microbial ecology (PhD). During PhD, she was a FEMS fellow at Lund University, Sweden. For postdoctoral research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UCSD, USA) she received a Fulbright Fellowship. Her research at the University of Vienna, Austria, was funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. Currently, she is working at MBP-NIB, which is located in a coastal area subject to constant fluctuations in environmental parameters and anthropogenic impacts, with increasing blooms of certain organisms and various types of pollution. Here, they focus their research on the interactions between the coastal microbiome and bloom-forming jellyfish and microbial indicators of faecal pollution, including potential pathogens, and impacts on marine biogeochemical cycles.

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NASLOV: Marine Microbes in the sea of change
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POVZETEK: Oceans and seas constitute the largest part of Earth's biosphere, and their smallest inhabitants – microbes - are invisible to the naked eye, but account for most of the ocean’s biomass and are the most productive and diverse members of marine food webs. The key factor contributing to the cosmopolitan distribution of microbes in oceanic habitats is the plasticity of their genomes (and thus their adaptability) and the different types of metabolic processes, some of which unique to microbes. In seawater, the pool of organic matter (OM) is composed of a plethora of chemical compounds of different origins, characterized by different size, complexity, availability, and reactivity. Through a chain of biochemical reactions, all particulate OM is eventually transformed into dissolved OM, which is almost exclusively accessible to microbes that operate various metabolic networks, and in this way, drive biogeochemical cycles at the base of the oceanic food web. The abundance, metabolic activity, and composition of microbial communities are influenced by a range of physical, chemical, and biological parameters, as well as by various interactions among organisms. Marine microbes are subject to constant fluctuations in environmental parameters, especially in coastal areas, and the resulting changes in microbial community dynamics affect the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems. Natural and anthropogenic influences are paving the way for projected changes in future oceans and will likely inevitably impact marine life, microbes, and the biogeochemical cycles they drive. However, the complexity, underlying mechanisms, and consequences of these processes remain unclear. Recent methodological advances in analytical chemistry and "omics" technology are providing insights into the relationship between individual compounds within the complexity of the OM pool and the metabolic network operated by the microbial community under specific environmental conditions. Only when we have gained this mechanistic understanding will we be able to predict the response of the marine ecosystem to natural and anthropogenic perturbations.

V četrtek 19. oktobra 2023, bo izveden seminar z naslovom "Plant mating systems response to rapid environmental change – examples of contemporary evolution and adaptive phenotypic plasticity".

ČAS in PROSTOR: Predavanje bo potekalo v Livadah 1.0 (Livade 6, Izola), predavalnica Epsilon (pritličje),  od 12.00 do 13.00 ure.

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Predavateljica: Bojana Stojanova
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About the guest lecturer: Bojana Stojanova is a plant evolutionary ecologist investigating plant adaptation to environmental change, with a specific focus on reproductive strategies. She is currently working as a non-tenure track assistant professor at the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic.

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NASLOV: "Plant mating systems response to rapid environmental change – examples of contemporary evolution and adaptive phenotypic plasticity".
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About the seminar: I will summarise two research projects investigating different mechanisms of plant mating system adaptation to rapid environmental variation. The first one explores contemporary evolution in entomophilous, short-lived arable weeds in response to climate change and pollinator decline using the resurrection approach. This approach consists of resurrection ancestral genotypes harvested in natural populations in the past and stored in seed repositories for several generations, then growing them side-by-side with their contemporary descendants harvested in the same population at present. The second one explores the adaptive value of plastic cleistogamy; a mixed-mating system where plants produce variable proportions of closed (cleistogamous) flowers which are obligately self-pollinated, and open, chasmogamous flowers which are potentially outcrossed. I investigate how cleistogamy varies between natural populations coming from contrasting climates and habitats, whether this variation is due to plasticity or genetic differentiation, and whether it confers an adaptive reproductive advantage in response to environmental variation.

V sredo, 11. oktobra 2023, bo izveden prvi seminar iz morskih vsebin.

ČAS in PROSTOR: Predavanje bo potekalo v Livadah 1.0 (Livade 6, Izola), predavalnica Epsilon (pritličje), od 12. do 13. ure. 

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Predavatelj: Dorian Vodopia
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Dorian Vodopia, born on the 5th of March 1996 in Rijeka, Croatia, attained a bachelor’s degree in Marine Sciences at the University Juraj Dobrila of Pula, Croatia in 2017. Thesis title: “Synthesis of silver nanoparticles and their impact on the sperm of sea urchin A. lixula”. Subsequently, in 2020 he obtained a master’s degree in Nature Conservation at the University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia. Thesis title: „Embryotoxicity and oxidative stress in the sea urchin P. lividus after co-exposure to PMMA microparticles and NSAID indomethacin”. From January 2021 to January 2023, he was employed as a project associate at the Laboratory for Marine Nanotechnology and Biotechnology, Centre for Marine Research in Rovinj, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia. Since April 2023, he has been employed as a PhD fellow at UiT- The Arctic University of Norway, Norwegian College of Fishery Science, HARVEST research group, DSolve Project Research Area 5. His PhD work is: „Inclusion of ghost fishing and its effects on ecosystems and biodiversity in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)”.

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NASLOV: Dsolve Project Research Area 5. Circularity of biobased, biodegradable, and non-degradable pl astics
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POVZETEK: An overview of the SFI DSolve project and the latest developments in Research Area 5: Circularity of biobased, biodegradable, and non-degradable plastics, will be presented. Including the ALDFG retrieval operation done in collaboration with the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, a long-term in-situ assessment of “Ghost Fishing” impacts on benthic environments: stock-specific catch rates in relation to gillnets and pots, and modelling the fate of ALDFG within the Norwegian marine environment.