SHORT RANGE VISUAL GUIDANCE IN BIRDS

By Prof Douglas Altshuler, University of British Columbia, Canada & Prof Srini Srinivasan University of Queensland, Australia

While considerable attention has been devoted over the years to the study of long-range navigation in birds, there has been relatively little research on the short-range visual guidance of avian flight. The last year, however, has seen an increased impetus in this new direction.The SEB Annual Meeting was well timed to highlight much of this new work, and also to examine how it relates to visual neuroscience and other aspects of avian vision. The full day of talks demonstrated how birds are using diverse and sophisticated algorithms to perceive their motion through complex environments, and do so with sparse information from eyes that have to serve multiple other purposes. 

The session highlighted a strengthening connection between behavioural and electrophysiological studies of how vision is used in flight, although there are still technical limitations to merging these approaches.

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!

SHORT RANGE VISUAL GUIDANCE IN BIRDS

By Prof Douglas Altshuler, University of British Columbia, Canada & Prof Srini Srinivasan University of Queensland, Australia

While considerable attention has been devoted over the years to the study of long-range navigation in birds, there has been relatively little research on the short-range visual guidance of avian flight. The last year, however, has seen an increased impetus in this new direction.The SEB Annual Meeting was well timed to highlight much of this new work, and also to examine how it relates to visual neuroscience and other aspects of avian vision. The full day of talks demonstrated how birds are using diverse and sophisticated algorithms to perceive their motion through complex environments, and do so with sparse information from eyes that have to serve multiple other purposes. 

The session highlighted a strengthening connection between behavioural and electrophysiological studies of how vision is used in flight, although there are still technical limitations to merging these approaches.

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!

THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL VARIATION IN THE BEHAVIOUR OF ANIMAL GROUPS

By Dr Shaun Killen, University of Glasgow & Dr Stefano Marras, IAMC-CNR, Italy

The last year has seen a shift toward understanding individual variation in animal behaviour and physiology within the context of social interactions. Depending on the situation, social forces appear capable of overriding or even amplifying existing variation among individuals. Our exciting session explored the role of individual variability in the functioning of animal groups, including maternal effects on social behaviours, the mechanics of leadership and movement within animal collectives, social conformity and individual habitat selection, spatial and temporal heterogeneity in animal groups, interspecific social interactions, and relationships between individual energy demand and group behaviours. An emerging theme is that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of our understanding of how individual physiology in particular may modulate links between individuals and their social environment. The recent research focus on intraspecific variability has revealed important insights into physiological and behavioural ecology, but we expect a surge in work that will extend the paradigm to include the behaviour of animal groups. Given that nearly all animals live within social groups at some point during their lives, the interplay between individual variation and group dynamics will be key for understanding the responses of wild animals to factors such as climate change.

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!

SUPER RESOLUTION MICROSCOPY HELPING TO SOLVE BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS

By Prof John Girkin, Durham University

The profile of super resolution microscopy rose rapidly at the end of 2015 with the award of the Nobel prize for chemistry to several pioneers in the field. The techniques available for super resolution imaging are now very broad and the main focus of this session was to illustrate how these methods can move on to actually help answer real biological questions. The presentations illustrated that this process is now on going with illustrations of the use of these methods to a wide range of biological samples ranging from intact blood vessels through to viruses and plants.
 
A clear direction for the future of this field is to enable the imaging of more intact samples and crucially to improve the speed of imaging so that more dynamic processes can be viewed. A crucial feature here being both the development of new fluorphores and technological solutions but the integration of this with advanced data-processing is becoming an increasingly important aspect of super resolution applications to biology. Future advances in the field are likely to occur where data from different scales of imaging, chemical specificity and 3D dynamic images are combined.

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!

SEB BRIGHTON 2016 SESSION REPORT: 
DYNAMIC ORGANISATION OF THE NUCLEUS

By Dr Katja Graumann, Oxford Brookes University

The “Dynamic Organisation of the Nucleus” session was the first meeting of the SEB cell section special interest group “Nuclear Dynamics”. The focus of the 3-day session was to showcase the development of nucleus research in a wide variety of model organisms such as Arabidopsis, yeast, C. elegans, Dictyostelium, snails, trypanosomes, maize and mouse. Various presentations detailed how changes in nuclear structure and chromatin organisation underlie physiological and developmental defects such as muscle development, ageing and pollen tube growth. Other research highlights included elucidation of molecular mechanisms that determine mechanical properties of nuclei. New methodologies to study nuclear organisation were also presented. Other talks introduced newly characterized components of nuclei, particularly in plants. In addition to the poster session, a discussion session involving most speakers and poster presenters was held. With overwhelmingly positive feedback the participants agreed that this opportunity of networking and dialogue for researchers approaching the field via different model systems was very much welcome. Ideas for the future direction of the special interest group were also suggested. In addition to all the brilliant contributions made by the talk and poster presenters, we also would like to thank our sponsors, the SEB, Nucleus and Frontiers in Plant Sciences, who generously supported our session. We are very much looking forward to the contributions to Nucleus and Journal of Experimental Botany, which are going to be published in due course.

Read another review of this session in the Nucleus Journal.

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!

GENERAL BIOMECHANICS IN BRIGHTON: WINNERS OF THE POSTER AND ORAL CONTRIBUTION AWARDS

Prof Peter Aerts, University Antwerp

The 1.5 days session of ‘General Biomechanics’ in Brighton, with 60 contributions (29 oral presentations and 31 posters) was definitely successful again. As usual, these contributions covered a wide diversity of topics (biomaterials, terrestrial locomotion, flight and swimming, adhesion, feeding mechanics, muscle mechanics, scaling...) presented by young, as well as more experienced and senior researchers.
  
The Brighton meeting also brought us the 11th edition of the 'General Biomechanics' awards: three poster awards and three prizes for the best talks. In memory of Prof. R.Mc.Neill Alexander, who passed away earlier this year and who was a ‘true hero’ for our biomechanics group (the biomechanical scientific community in general), it was suggested to rename the awards from this year onwards as the ‘R.McNeill Alexander awards for Biomechanics’.  This proposal was approved by the AGM with a lengthy round of applause.  Traditionally, all 60 presenters were candidate-winners but unfortunately, only three winners per category could be awarded. 

 

POSTER PRESENTATION WINNERS

First prize: Sam Van Wassenbergh (Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, France) -‘Dynamics of the beak during singing in finches’

Second prize: Pauline Provini (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil) - ‘Walking or hopping? Evolutionary trends in terrestrial locomotion of Neotropical birds’

Third prize: Sebastian Kruppert (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany) - ‘Push or pull? The light-weight architecture of the Daphnia pulex carapace is adapted to withstand tension, not compression’

ORAL PRESENTATION WINNERS

First prize: Katharina Bunk (Plant Biomechanics Group and Botanic Garden University of Freiburg, Germany) -  ‘Functional morphology, biomechanics and Finite Element simulation of Schefflera ramifications for biomimetic applications in civil engineering'

Second prize: Florian Muijers (Wageningen University, Netherlands) - ‘Wing damage control in flying fruit flies’

Third prize: Tina Steinbrecher (Royal Holloway University London, UK) ‘Do fungi release mechanical dormancy conferred by the seed coverings in Lepidium didymum?’ 

Congratulations to all the prizewinners.  I hope to meet you all again next summer in Göteborg.

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!

 

THE PLANT ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM: A DYNAMIC MULTITASKING ORGANELLE

By Dr Verena Kriechbaumer, University of Oxford

Researchers from Oxford Brookes University and the University of Warwick teamed up to organise a 2-day session on the plant endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The ER is a network-forming organelle present in all cells from plants to humans and plays a vital role in protein production, protein folding, and quality control. As such, the plant ER is responsible for the production and storage of a great proportion of our edible proteins and lipids.

The ER sessions focused on most relevant topics in current ER research. In addition to understanding of ER morphology-to-function relations and visualisation of ER ultrastructure and dynamics, latest news on ER function in plant stress adaptions was presented.

Prof Eija Jokitalo from the University of Helsinki kick-started the first part of the conference session on the ER structure session with a keynote lecture on ER structure in mammalian cells, which included some amazing 3-D microscopy images. This was followed by talks on ER lipidomics and enzyme metabolons and ER in stress signalling with outstanding presentations from our invited speakers Prof Birger Lindberg Moller, Prof Barbara Halkier, Dr Nozomu Koizumi, and Prof Eva Stöger. The final afternoon was reserved for two workshops on membrane lipid analysis (Dr Patrick Moreau) and computational analysis of cellular structures (Dr Mark Fricker). 

In addition to cutting edge science, great discussions, fruitful networking and blossoming collaborations, the participants enjoyed sun, beach, vast amounts of coffee, the infamous SEB “wine trail” and a late night Mexican feast with mojitos for all the session speakers. 

See the full programme for our 2017 Annual Meeting in Gothenburg!