Talks and presentations
See a map of all the places I've given a talk!
September 27, 2019
Talk, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
I gave this talk at the 3rd annual Uppsala Transposon Symposium, covering most of my PhD work on B. plicatilis genome size variation. This covered the genomic causes of interspecific genome size variation (mostly transposons), genomic causes of intraspecific genome size variation (annotating B chromosomes), and some analyses of meiotic behaviour of B chromosomes.
October 04, 2018
Poster, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
I presented this poster at the 2nd Uppsala Transposon Symposium, showing the genomic causes of changes in genome size across the Brachionus plicatilis species complex.
October 26, 2017
Talk, SIL Austria - LimnoAlp, University of Innsbruck, Austria
This talk was awarded second place in the student presentation awards
August 24, 2017
Poster, Martiniplaza, Groningen, Netherlands
I presented this poster at the 2017 Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) in Groningen. The poster focused on ongoing comparative genomics of 14 rotifer genomes, taking a mostly coverage-based approach to identify genomic regions potentially contributing to genome size change in the Brachionus plicatilis species complex.
April 09, 2017
Talk, 5th meeting of Fresh Blood for FreshWater, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Rotifers are an important part of freshwater ecosystems. The Brachionus plicatilis species complex inhabits a wide range of freshwater habitats worldwide. This complex of at least 15 species is morphologically diverse, both within and between species, and likely inhabits many different niches within these ecosystems. As well as this range of morphologies, B. plicatilis spp. exhibits genome size variations up to 8-fold. This dramatic change in genome size across the species complex is likely the largest observed in such closely related animals. The consequences of such variation, on both the structure and composition of genome, and the biology of the species complex is unknown. One species in this complex, Brachionus asplanchnoidis, has genome sizes ranging from 205Mbp to 271Mbp. Genome sequencing and analysis of different populations from this species are the first step in understanding such large genome size changes on short evolutionary time-scales. These data can then be related to biological and ecological outcomes. Often, in similar cases of genome size variation in plants, these changes are largely driven by non-coding DNA. Initial analyses of B. asplanchnoidis genomes indicate that repetitive DNA sequences are partly responsible for a large part of the observed genome size variation. The identity and distribution of these repetitive sequences shed light on the influence of such sequences not only on genome size evolution, but also on rotifer biology.
July 26, 2016
Poster, 6th meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Uppsala, Sweden
I presented this poster about anterior-posterior axis in Brachionus plicatilis at the 6th meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology in Uppsala, Sweden.
August 30, 2015
Poster, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
I presented this poster at the XIV. International Rotifer Symposium, documenting my initial attempts at visualising and counting chromosomes in different clones of this rotifer species complex that display different genome sizes.