A good fellowship application takes time to craft, so if you are thinking of coming to the UK and are interested in climate change effects on insect reproduction - including different life stages, eggs, micropyles, imaging, microscopy, thermal limits, ecological physiology, plants and microclimates and more - now is the time to think about it! There are different schemes to consider, depending on eligibility criteria:
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Time is a tyrant and, as I have write this, my summer Erasmus student, Teun de Jong, has almost finished his internship. I first met Teun in Wageningen, in February 2023, during my visiting fellowship to the lab of Nina Fatouros. Teun was fascinated by my work on thermal fertility sensitivity in the large white butterfly, Pieris brassicae, and the experimental set up that Jamie Smith had worked on during last summer 2022 for his MSc research (as a side note, congratulations to Jamie on securing a PhD at the University of Hull!). Luckily, he secured an Erasmus research internship to come work with me in Lincoln this summer 2023! Teun has worked very hard this summer to replicate Jamie's experiments heating wild pupae of the large white butterfly, and measuring the effects of heat on butterfly reproduction success and fitness. Teun arrived the last week in May 2023, and, in a happy coincidence, I had just received news that I had been funded by the Royal Society for an international exchange with Sylvain Pincebourde. Teun therefore, started trialling different thermal imaging cameras with Sylvain's help. Following this, Teun launched into rearing butterflies and plants, setting up experiments and troubleshooting the butterfly's lack of interest in mating! I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Teun, who is looking for a PhD. I can highly recommend him, he is hard working, dedicated, and I have no doubt he will find a suitable project to pursue and excel in. It all started with an email in late August 2022. I wrote to Nina Fatouros at Wageningen University and Research (WUR), to ask her for some images (SEMs) of Pieris brassicae eggs. Over a few brief email exchanges, we discovered that we both shared an interest on insect eggs, and that we could learn from each other's different angles (mine on the evolution of reproductive traits, Nina's on plant-insect interactions). Nina invited me to apply for a Visiting Scientist Fellowship at WUR and then fast forward to 30th January 2023, I found myself on a train crossing the Channel heading for Wageningen, the Netharlands. I spent four intense (and fun) weeks at the Biosystematics Group, WUR. Nina, her PhD student Liana Greenberg, and I, drafted some hypotheses on latitudinal and climatic gradients effects on eggs of populations of Pieris spp. Nina and Liana have collected Pieris napi from across Europe, from Wageningen to Spain. Nina also has two stable populations of Pieris rapae and brassicae, which she has kept in the lab for a number of generations. I then spent several days in the company of Marcel Giesbers, a very knowledgeable SEM technician, to image Pieris eggs using Cryo SEM, which was a lot of fun (oh, and talking of Dutch cheeses with Marcel...). I have learnt a lot about plant-insect interactions (and dusted off my two botany exams taken decades ago), started a collaboration with an amazing colleague, and visited the Netherlands for the first time! I was made to feel at home by every member of the Biosystematics group, and I am indebted to Nina, Klaas, Eric, Liana, Wilma, Marcel, Patrick, Jordy, and everyone else at WUR + WEES for inviting me to give a talk. I really hope to be able to come back soon. At the beginning of this year, I was invited to join a Special Topics Network of colleagues (mainly, but not exclusively, behavioural ecologists) of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology to work on the evolutionary ecology of thermal fertility limits. The network is chaired by Claudia Fricke, Tom Prize, Rhonda Snook and Amanda Bretman, and I was very excited to join this initiative.
I have previously noted that males and females show different sensitivity to temperature stress. This may tell us something about how species will be affected by climate change and how we might buffer or tackle these sensitivities. I am very keen to explore this further. As I mentioned previously, I have been isolating at home for over half a year now, and therefore I was disappointed that I would not be able to join the inaugural meeting of the Special Topics Network set to take place at the end of March 2020 in Germany. However, due to the current lockdown in place in most of Europe and the rest of the world, the inaugural meeting was hosted online. Three separate online sessions were hosted to allow all participants to have a say on how the network should be shaped, and what we would like to achieve, so more to follow soon! |
AuthorGraziella Iossa Archives
August 2023
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