Research Group
Members of the lab had the opportunity to attend and present at the American Society of Naturalists’ Asilomar 2023 Conference from January 6th to 9th at Pacific Grove, California. Strong storms were braved and massive swells were overcome to discuss ecology and evolution at such a beautiful location. Links to presentation descriptions and pictures from the conference can be found below:
Jeewantha Rathnayaka Mudiyanselage
This past week Alexa Fredston (Postdoctoral Researcher), Zoë Kitchel (Ph.D. Candidate), and Malin met with a group of international researchers as a part of the FishGlob project hosted by the Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity based in Montpelier, France. The team, Zooming in from Brazil, Seattle, Connecticut, Nova Scotia, France, Vancouver, and beyond is working to better understand changes in species distributions and biodiversity in the ocean by collecting and combining over 70 bottom trawl surveys from across the world.
Alexa presented on a project examining the impacts of marine heat waves on fish biomass in North America and Europe. She has found that substantial decreases in biomass are only associated with the most intense heatwaves. Zoë presented on a project testing for spatial homogenization of fish communities across a diverse array of trawl surveys. While some regions are experiencing homogenization, likely a result of anthropogenic impacts on the ocean, a number of regions are experiencing differentiation, or no directional change in community composition over time.
This exciting collaboration will allow us to better understand range shift dynamics, especially of species crossing international borders and better shape strategies to manage these cross boundary species and future fish communities.
The Temporal Genomics Working Group, a collaboration between five universities including members of the Pinsky Lab, is presenting a Twitter Symposium as part of the Research Coordinated Network for Evolution in Changing Seas.
Members of the RCN for Evolution in Changing Seas and the ecology & evolution community at large are invited to participate in a Twitter conference during the first full week in July 2021. This Twitter conference is aimed specifically at researchers interested in, or currently utilizing, temporal genomics methods and practices.
This Twitter conference will provide:
Presentation style:
Unsure what a Twitter conference is? Check out this guide from the #ASEH2018 Twitter conference for more information on the general structure and types of presentations, or tweets, involved.
If you have questions about the Temporal Genomics Twitter Conference, please contact René Clark: rene.clark[at]rutgers.edu (@rene_delight on Twitter), or John Whalen: jwhal002[at]odu.edu (@WhaleTalez on Twitter).
For more info. visit: https://tempgenomics-rcn.github.io/website/conference.html
Use the hashtag #TempGen2021Tweets
Jeewantha Bandara, a Pinsky Lab graduate student and Fulbright Scholar, attended the virtual annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society from September 14th to the 25th. He presented a poster titled “Use of Dissolved Oxygen, Salinity and Zooplankton Concentration to Determine Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) Habitat in North East Atlantic”. Jeewantha sought to determine which underlying environmental variables determine the distribution of Black Sea Bass. He used a two-stage GAM to explore the predictive power of a range of environmental variables on presence/absence and abundance of Black Sea Bass. He found that a model including salinity, zooplankton, and temperature best predicted the distribution of Black Sea Bass.
Click the links below to download the poster, and poster presentation video!
Pinsky Lab members, Jennifer, Lisa, Allison, Katrina, Rene and Dan, attended The Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) 2019 Annual Meeting in Louisville, KY from August 11th to the 16th. All of them presented an oral presentation or a poster at the conference, attended talks, met researchers in their subfields, and attended networking events.
When not attending the conference, or a networking event, they all spent time exploring Louisville – riding Bird scooters about the town, and trying lots of local food and drink.
Malin, Zoe, and Becca all attended, and gave presentations at the Species on the Move conference at the Kruger National Park in South Africa in late July.
All of them spoke to the theme of the conference: Zoë’s “Alternative climate drivers of local species richness, colonization, and extirpation in marine fishes”, Becca’s “Adapting to change? Availability of fish stocks to fishing communities on the US west coast”, and Malin’s plenary on the “Impacts of climate warming on ectotherms in the ocean and on land.
Outside of presenting and networking at the conference, they had the chance to take in the breathtaking scenery at Kruger, exploring the savannah and catching views of baboons, giraffes, and elephants!
Our lab members went to several conferences in early 2018!
Lisa and Malin are at the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon this week. They are both giving talks (Lisa: “Ecological implications of thermal stress and larval connectivity in the Coral Triangle”; Malin; “Climate, species distributions, and increasing species richness in North American marine communities”), and Malin is on a panel about engaging with decision-makers to navigate ocean change.
Becca recently led a discussion, “Mechanisms and Outcomes of Predator-Prey Interactions: Scaling Across Space and Time”, at the Gordon Research Conference in Ventura, CA.
Emily attended the Andina workshop in Patagonia, in which the group discussed knowledge gaps and future directions in invasion biology and range expansion due to climate change.
Katrina attended the 150th annual American Society of Naturalists conference in January in Pacific Grove, CA, where she gave a talk: “Going with the flow: connectivity in a variable ocean”.
Lots of great presentations this month:
Postdoc Jim Morley is just back from presenting and participating in the latest Fisheries Forum in Monterey, CA earlier this week. The topic was “Managing Fisheries in a Changing Environment,” and participants included Fisheries Management Council members, staff, NOAA employees, and many state agency employees. Lots of interest in how to adapt to the rapidly changing ocean conditions that we are seeing. Jim talked about how OceanAdapt and the species distribution projections we are developing can help.
