Spring 2007 BIO 503.007Seminar in Biological and Biomedical Sciences (SiBBs) (Also taught with: PHYS 581.007, ANTH 560.007, CS 591.007, W 15:00-17:30 , CERIA 125 Each student will host a guest speaker. Host Tools Packet (.doc/.pdf) 17 January 2007
Reading: Allometry of human fertility and energy use I try to understand general principles that govern social organization, particularly how the size of a social system influences its efficiency in acquiring energy and information. I use scaling theory to model ant societies, human societies and the infrastructure, information and technology that enables human societies to function. More about Dr. Moses at: Host: Erik Erhardt (erike@stat.unm.edu) 24 January 2007 Recent and deep-time perspectives on ecological network structure Dr. Jennifer A. Dunne co- founded and co- directs the Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab (Berkeley, CA), is in residence as a visiting professor at the Santa Fe Institute (Santa Fe, NM), and is a Research Associate with the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab (Gothic, CO). Her current research uses computational approaches to elucidate general patterns and theory of ecosystem structure and function, focusing on networks of predator- prey interactions expressed as complex food webs. Dr. Dunne is using this ecological network framework to explore how trophic structure and dynamics interact to influence different aspects of ecosystem stability, for example the robustness of food webs to biodiversity loss. Through collaborations with archaeologists and paleobiologists, she is extending the scope of such work through time to explore fundamental constraints on ecological organization. Dr. Dunne and colleagues are collaborating with computer scientists to develop new ecoinformatic technologies to facilitate more sophisticated synthesis, analysis, and sharing of information related to ecological networks. More about Dr. Dunne at: Host: Jordan Okie (jokie@unm.edu) 31 January 2007
The Promises and Illusions of a Theoretical Medicine My research lies at the interface of evolutionary biology, applied mathematics and computer science. I am generally interested in biological signaling systems and the physical form that biological information takes, be it genetic, protein based, organismal, or linguistic. I ask how this information can be used to perform simple processing tasks and how the material carrying the information constrains these tasks. Of great interest is how complex structures (such as phenotypes and social systems) are constructed through signaling interactions. More about Dr. Krakauer a: Host: Cameron Ellis (cellis@unm.edu) 7 February 2007
Natural Archives and Unnatural Climates? The Case of Ancient Trees. Malcolm K. Hughes was born 24 July 1943 in Matlock, England. He received the degrees of B.Sc. in Botany and Zoology (1965) and of Ph.D. (1970) from the University of Durham, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Soil Biology Institute of the University of Aarhus, Denmark (1968-1969) and again at the University of Durham (1969-1971). He taught and researched Ecology at the Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University) from 1971 until 1986. He then became Director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research of the University of Arizona, a position he held until 1999. He continues his research and teaching as Professor of Dendrochronology. He has conducted research projects and given lectures in many countries, including Russia, China, India, Jordan, France, Finland, Denmark, as well as the USA and the UK. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (1998) and held a CIRES Visiting Fellowship at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1992-1993) and a Bullard Fellowship at Harvard University (1999-2000). He was made a Fellow of the Galileo Circle in Spring 2006, an honor given by the College of Science of the University of Arizona. Selected Readings: M.K. Hughes and G. Funkhouser. (2003). FREQUENCY-DEPENDENT CLIMATE SIGNAL IN UPPER AND LOWER FOREST BORDER TREE RINGS IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE GREAT BASIN. Climatic Change 59: 233–244 V.C. LaMarche, D.A. Graybill, H.C. Fritts and M.R. Rose. (1984). Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: Tree Ring Evidence for Growth Enhancement in Natural Vegetation. Science, New series, Vol. 225, No. 4666. Pp. 1019-1021 More about Professor Hughes at: Host: Wenyun Zuo (wyzuo@unm.edu) 14 February 2007
Experimental Investigation of Fairness and Cooperation Among the Tsimane of Bolivia My perspective is that of human behavioral or evolutionary ecology, which attempts to explain variation in behavior as adaptive solutions to the competing life-history demands of growth, development, reproduction, parental care, and mate acquisition. Behavioral ecologists develop and test evolutionary models to better understand widespread variation in behavior within and across cultures. My research focuses on numerous aspects of social and economic behavior among foragers and forager-farmers. I am interested in understanding proximate and ultimate motivations behind the diversity of cooperative behaviors we find in small-scale, traditional populations, as well as in large-scale modern societies. I am interested in how aspects of social structure, including kinship, friendship, and other social networks affect solutions to collective action problems. A current focus is the evolution of human lifespan and implications for understanding age-related changes in behavior. These interests have culminated in a new five-year NSF and NIH project focusing on a life history approach to growth, development, aging, social behavior, and production. I have conducted fieldwork with two South American lowland Indian populations, the Ache of Paraguay and the Tsimane of Bolivia. More about Dr. Gurven at: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/ Selected Publications: Culture sometimes matters: intra-cultural variation in pro-social behavior among the Tsimane of Bolivia Host: Helen Davis (hdavis81@unm.edu) 21 February 2007
"Measurement and validation of power- law distributions" Aaron Clauset received his B.S. in Physics from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico. Currently, he works at the Santa Fe Institute as a post- doctoral fellow. His research focuses on the structure and function of complex networks, statistical tools for complex systems, and mathematical modeling, among other things. Recommended Readings: M. Mitzenmacher. (2006) Editorial: The Future of Power Law Research. Internet Mathematics Vol. 2, No. 4: 525-534 More about Dr. Clauset: Host: Alison Boyer ( aboyer@unm.edu) 28 February 2007
Stochastic effects in bio- chemical networks Ilya Nemenman got his B.S degree in Math and Physics from Santa Clara University, and then continued on for an M.S. degree in Physics at San Francisco State University. His early interests were in general relativity, but he switched to biological physics while working towards his Ph.D. at Princeton. Since then he spent time as a postdoc at NEC Research Institute and at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB. Dr. Nemenman was briefly a faculty at the Centers for Systems Biology at the Columbia University Medical School, working on machine learning methods for understanding genetic regulation in cancer cells, before joining LANL as a Technical Staff Member at the Informatics Group. His general research interests revolve around signal processing in various biological systems, such as biochemical networks, neurons, and behaving animals. More about Dr. Nemenman at: Suggested Reading: Host: Sushmita Roy (sroy@cs.unm.edu) 7 March 2007
Decoupled Plant and Insect Diversity after the End- Cretaceous Extinction I use fossil plants from the Cretaceous and Paleogene as quantitative indicators of global change, with special regard to paleoclimates, floral diversity, evolution, and extinction, and insect herbivory of fossil leaves. A major emphasis is the interval from the terminal Cretaceous through the middle Eocene, which includes latest Cretaceous climate changes, the mass extinction at the Cretaceous- Paleogene boundary, the recovery of terrestrial ecosystems during the Paleocene, and global warming across the Paleocene- Eocene boundary. Major field areas are the Western Interior USA and Patagonia. Departmental Seminar, Thursday March 8th @3:30pm in Castetter Hall Room 100: Ancient South American Biodiversity: Paleogene Floras of Patagonia Rediscovered More about Professor Wilf at: Selected Publications: Wilf, P; K.R. Johnson and B.T. Hube. (2003). Correlated terrestrial and marine evidence for global climate changes before mass extinction at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. PNAS. 100:599-604 Wilf, P and K.R. Johnson. (2004). Land plant extinction at the end of the Cretaceous: a quantitative analysis of the North Dakota megafloral record. Paleobiology. 30:347–368 Wilf, P; C.C. Labandeira; K.R. Johnson and B. Ellis. (2006) Decoupled Plant and Insect Diversity After the End-Cretaceous Extinctiontion. Science. 313:1112-1115 Host: Hari Nam Simran Khalsa (hkhalsa1@unm.edu) 14 March 2007Spring Break (No Lectures) 21 March 2007
Following birds along the pathway to invasion My research is concerned with a broad range of large-scale patterns and processes in ecology. It is at large scales that general patterns are most likely to be detected in ecological systems, while processes occurring at these scales affect the structure of the smaller-scale animal communities that have been more typically studied by ecologists. Topics of interest include patterns in the abundance, geographic range and body size of animals, especially birds, and the inter-relationships between these factors. My current work is focused particularly on the study of biological invasions and extinctions, and on understanding the factors that drive these processes, again primarily using birds. Departmental Seminar, Thursday March 22nd @3:30pm in Castetter Hall Room 100: Alien invasions, native extinctions, and island avifaunas More about Professor Blackburn at: Selected Publications: Duncan, R.P., Blackburn, T.M. & Worthy, T.H. (2002). Prehistoric bird extinctions and human hunting. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B,269, 517 - 521. Host: Alison Boyer ( aboyer@unm.edu) 28 March 20072007-08 PiBBs Fellowship Information Session 4 April 2007
"Linguistic and Genetic Coevolution in Native America" Keith Hunley, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, uses molecular data and methods to address long-standing anthropological problems. His research interests include modern human origins, the sociopolitical correlates of genetic structure in small scale populations, genetic and linguistic correspondence, and nature and causes of human biological variation. Keith teaches courses in human genetics, population genetics, computer aided inferences in natural science, and molecular methods. More about Dr. Hunley at: http://www.unm.edu/~anthro/faculty/profiles/hunley.htm Suggested readings: Hunley, K.L. and J.C. Long. (2005). Gene flow across linguistic boundaries in Native North American populations. PNAS. 102:1312–1317(Optional)
Host: Bill Burnside (bburnsid@unm.edu)
11 April 2007
Communities, complex systems and the legacy of Frank Preston While ecological research has emphasized experimental, deductive, and reductionist approaches over the last half century, the inherent complexity of ecological systems suggests that other paradigms will be necessary to stimulate important advances in the 21st Century. Inspired by 19th Century field naturalists, who conducted observations across the entire breadth of the natural sciences, I have developed a horizontally (focusing on vascular plants, lepidoptera, and terrestrial gastropods) and vertically integrated research program that ranges from organism taxonomy through population, community, and spatiotemporal ecology to biogeography, macroecology, and ecological modeling. The end result of these activities is the identification of general and often statistical theoretical principles that underlie ecological pattern and process, and the application of these findings to the conservation of biological diversity. More about Dr. Nekola at: Selected readings: Preston, F.W. (1950). Gas laws and wealth laws. Sci. Monthly. 71:309-311. Preston, F.W. (1981). Pseudo-lognormal distributions. Ecology. 62:355-364. Host: Erik Erhardt (erike@stat.unm.edu) 18 April 2007
Species- abundance distribution: neutral regularity, niche determinism, or idiosyncratic stochasticity? He works in the Biodiversity & Landscape Modeling Group in the Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta. His group primarily focuses on understanding how and why species disperse, colonize, persist, and distribute in landscapes. He actively engages in research synthesizing and explaining macroecological patterns of biodiversity across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. He embraces both theoretical and empirical approaches to pursuing our interest. More about Fangliang He, PhD: http://www.rr.ualberta.ca/people/fhe/index.html Selected Readings: Yu, D.W.; J.W. Terborgh and M. D. Potts. (1998) Can high tree species richness be explained by Hubbell's null model? Ecology Letters 1:193-199. Volkov, I.; J.R. Banavar; S.P. Hubbell and A. Maritan. (2003) Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology. Nature. 424:1035-1037. Shipley, B.; D. Vile and E. Garnier. (2006)From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity. Science. 314:812-814. Host: Wenyun Zuo (wyzuo@unm.edu) 25 April 2007
Ecological Niche Modeling: Challenges of Using Presence- Only Data My research includes the methodological and applied aspects of geographical information science. On the methodological front, I mainly focus on geocomputation, remote sensing techniques, spatial analysis and spatial data accuracy. On the applied front, I am interested in application of geospatial techniques in solving large-scale ecological and geographical problems, with emphasis on the effects of invasive species, climate change, and human disturbance on terrestrial ecosystems. More about Dr. Guo at: Selected Readings: Guo, Q.; M. Kelly and C.H. Graham. (2005). Support vector machines for predicting distribution of Sudden Oak Death in California. Eco. Modelling. 182:75-90. Kelly, M.; Q. Guo; D. Liu and D. Shaari. (2007) Modeling the risk for a new invasive forest disease in the United States: An evaluation of five environmental niche models. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. In Press Host:Wenyun Zuo (wyzuo@unm.edu) 2 May 2007
Biological scaling and climate change: Effects of temperature on population growth, species interactions, and rates of adaptation I use allometric scaling relationships for body size and body temperature to construct models at the population and ecosystem levels. I am extending this by combining allometry with models for species interactions and competition. In so doing, I am investigating how changes in temperature--both the mean value and the degree of fluctuation--affect species abundances, biodiversity, and ecosystem stability. More about Dr. Savage at: Selected Publications : V. M. Savage (2004). Improved approximations to scaling relationships for species, populations, and ecosystems across latitudinal and elevational gradients. Journal of Theoretical Biology 227(4), 525-534. A.P. Allen, J. F. Gillooly, V. M. Savage, J. H. Brown, (2006). Kinetic effects of temperature on rates of genetic divergence and speciation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 103, 9130-9135. V. M. Savage, C. T. Webb, and J. Norberg, A trait-based framework for studying the effects biodiversity on ecosystem functioning, in review at Journal of Theoretical Biology.(Coming Once Published) Host: Jordan Okie (jokie@unm.edu) 5-12 May 2007Finals Week (No Lectures) |
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PIBBS - MSC 03 2020- 1 University of New Mexico - Albuquerque NM 87131 - USA - (505) 277-9337 |
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Melanie Moses, Assistant Professor
Jennifer A. Dunne, Visiting Professor
David Krakauer, Professor
Malcolm K. Hughes, Professor of Dendrochronology,
Michael Gurven Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara 
Aaron Clauset, Post Doctoral Fellow
Ilya Nemenman, PhD, Research Scientist
Peter Wilf, Assistant Professor &
Professor Timothy Blackburn
Keith Hunley, Assistant Professor
Jeff Nekola, Postdoctoral Researcher
Fangliang He, PhD
Qinghua Guo, Assistant Professor
Van M. Savage, Instructor