Lucknow: The first day of the 5th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Evolutionary Biologists got off to an engaging start at University of Lucknow. Almost 200 participants have arrived from all corners of India
A total of 13 lectures took place, which included 2 Plenary lectures, 5 invited lectures and 6 oral presentations. The plenary lectures were of Prof. Tom Tregenza, University of Exeter, UK and Prof. HA Ranganath, University of Mysore and Centre for Human Genetics, Bangalore. Prof. Tom Tregenza, talked about the common chirping cricket and discussed his data from 20 years on a group of crickets. He showed how big data sets are required to understand change in structure and behaviour of any organism. He also discussed how studying behaviour can help us understand the adaptations and responses to climate change.
Dr. Anindita Bhadra, IISER Kolkata, talked about stray dog families and how they cooperate amongst themselves. She talked about the effect of human interactions on shaping these relations.
Dr. Amit Tripathi, Department of Zoology, University of Lucknow presented his data on fish parasitic worms known as monogeneans. He showed how these specialist worms have spread across the world and evolved. He also discussed how a serious threat these worms are to the fish industry.
Dr. Krushnmegh Kunte, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, spoke about the beautiful Common Mormon butterfly and how the rare morphs evolve in this butterflies. Dr. Kunte is a world renowned expert on butterflies and runs a big citizen project on butterflies of India, details of which can be found on the website www.ifoundbutterflies.org.
Dr. NG Prasad, IISER Mohali spoke on how exposure of parents to pathogens or infective micro-organisms improves the immune function in offspring but is not passed on as effectively to the grand offspring. His finding are important in understanding the heredity of immune function.
Talk by Dr. Yashraj Chavan discussed how possibly multicellular organisms may have evolved from unicellular organisms.
Other young research scholars Abhishek Nair (cuticular hydrocarbons in relation to drought in fruit flies), Bodhisatta Nandy (mating strategies in parthenium beetle), Debarpita Das (Cricket songs in competing males), Shubha Govindrajan (how the pest flour beetle ‘ghun’ are affected by age or density), Banaja (how fungicide affects survival of water fleas), and Bhavya (butterfly wing colour evolution) talked on.
All the talks were followed by poster session in which 59 posters were displayed by research scholars and assessed. ISEB places emphasis on encouraging young minds with senior faculty acting as mentors, and it is very heartening to see such vibrant inspired young generation, said, Prof. Geetanjali Mishra, Organizing Secretary.
