QE: Disease Ecology and Risk from Small Mammal-borne Pathogens in Singapore (Neves, Erica Sena, 26 Nov, 10am)

Department of Biological Sciences, NUS
Qualifying Examination

Disease Ecology and Risk from Small Mammal-borne Pathogens in Singapore

Speaker:          Neves, Erica Sena (Graduate Student, Dept. of Biological Sciences, NUS)
Date:               26 November 2014, Wednesday
Time:               10am
Venue:             Conference Room-II (S1, Level 3, mezzanine)
Supervisor:      Asst Prof Bickford, David P

Abstract: –

Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose a significant public health challenge globally, with severe economic, social, and health consequences. The frequency of epidemics caused by newly emerging and re-emerging pathogens and the likelihood of rapid global spread have increased dramatically in recent decades, with Southeast Asia considered a hot spot for future emergence events. Small mammals play an important role in the maintenance and transmission of several pathogens, and they have been the source of pandemic outbreaks, causing periodic global and regional outbreaks of pathogens like hantaviruses and leptospirosis. Singapore is an ideal site to study the risk of EIDs exposure and infection from small mammals – it has lost nearly all of its original habitats and suffered a consequent loss of wildlife diversity, and this is worrying because biodiversity loss has been correlated with increased EIDs risk. In this study, I propose using a combination of field surveillance, ecological analysis, laboratory diagnostics, evolutionary genomics, bioinformatics, and predictive modeling and mapping to identify pathogens present in Singapore small mammals.

All are welcome

Antonia Monteiro weighs in on the colour blue on NPR

Free of teaching (it’s Reading Week), David Bickford was surfing the net, perusing NPR and happy to see colleague Antonia Monteiro quoted in a piece about blue color in animals [“How Animals Hacked The Rainbow And Got Stumped On Blue,” by Rae Ellen Bichel. NPR, 12 Nov 2014].

“Everywhere you look, organisms have been inventing different solutions to creating the same color,” says Antonia Monteiro, who studies butterfly wings in Singapore.

Monteiro says a lot of animals use different materials to get the same effect. Butterfly wings are sheathed in reflective scales made of chitin, the same stuff that makes a crab’s shell hard. And a 2012 study found that some birds use bubble-laced keratin (the same stuff that human fingernails are made of) in the barbs of their feathers; it scatters the light from the feather in a way that happens to look blue to humans.

All that blue not pigmented! Head over to the NPR page.

Thanks for the alert, David!

From August 2014 on NPR, see also “Butterfly Shifts From Shabby To Chic With A Tweak Of The Scales“.

“The behaviour of giant clams” – Pamela Soo & Peter Todd, 2014

Pamela who has not strayed far from marine life, says, “yay, clams! five years later, and most of the searching and editing on his part, my prof [Peter Todd] has finally found a home for my chunky, lengthy stackofa thesis! all the final year moments of madness distilled into nineteen pages of a scientific journal.”

If you’re keen to peek into the madness, see the paper at Springer.com” (full download).

Congratulations and thanks Pam and Pete! I’ll be using it in the LSM1103 Biodiversity mollusca lecture myself!

Photo by Creative Kids.

Tue 11 Nov 2014: 6.30pm @ Brookhaven – Book Launch of “Dynamic Environments of Singapore” by Dan Friess & Grahame Oliver (NUS Geography)

From Dan Friess in Geography,

On the 11th of November Grahame Oliver and I are having a book launch for our new textbook “Dynamic Environments of Singapore”, which was published earlier this year. I’d like to invite you to attend – there will be copies available for purchase ($30 – bargain!).

Please find the details on the FASS Environment Cluster blog.

An event co-organized by the FASS Environment Cluster and the Singapore Research Nexus.