Category

Research

Nov 14
0

A month of presentations

By | Presentation

This past month has been a wonderful whirlwind of work-related travel, to and from Canada (twice!) and roundabout Maine.  I kicked off the month with a trip to the University of New Brunswick in St. John to give an invited seminar to the Biology Department. The following week, I ferried across the Bay of Fundy to the Society for Marine Mammalogy biennial conference held this year in Halifax.  Finally, earlier this week I gave a seminar at Maine Maritime Academy.

These varied opportunities provided a great avenue to share our research with diverse audiences – from students to faculty, and from stakeholders to managers – in diverse formats – from a 4 minute speed-talk to 1-hr seminars.  I was particularly excited to speak about cross-border marine mammal issues in both Canada and the US, and I enjoyed meeting many new people as well as catching up with old friends and colleagues.  Thank you to Scott Pavey, Jessica Muhlin, and SMM for hosting my visits!

Cammen KM (2017) Molecular perspectives on conservation success: a tale of two seals in the Northwest Atlantic. Maine Maritime Academy Marine Sciences Seminar Series, Castine, ME.

Cammen KM, Vincze S, Heller S, McLeod B, Wood S, Bowen WD, Hammill MO, Puryear WB, Runstadler JR, Wenzel F, Kinnison M, Frasier TF (2017) Genetic diversity from pre-bottleneck to recovery in sympatric pinnipeds in the Northwest Atlantic. 22nd Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Halifax, NS.

Cammen KM (2017) Genomic perspectives on protected species recovery: a case of two pinnipeds in the Northwest Atlantic. University of New Brunswick Department of Biological Sciences Seminar Series, St. John, NB.

Jul 18
0

Seal genomics at the Gordon Conference

By | Presentation, Research

Kristina presented her findings on the impacts of historical bottleneck, recent recovery, and geographic expansion in gray and harbor seals* at the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics in Biddeford, Maine.  GRC’s are scientific meetings with an explicit focus on cutting-edge research and promoting scientific discussion.  This year’s meeting spanned the spectrum from model to non-model system, and from theoretical to empirical.  It left me feeling inspired and excited to apply new sequencing technologies and analytical pipelines to marine mammal species in an effort to better understand their ecology and evolution.

*Stay tuned for new publications that summarize this work soon!

Jul 06
0

New publication: Cost of tolerance

By | Publication, Research

In collaboration with new marine physiology professor, Nishad Jayasundara, and collaborators at Duke University, we’ve published our findings on the cost of evolving tolerance to anthropogenic pollutants in the Atlantic killifish.  These fish represent a “natural experiment” in which to study the evolution of toxin resistance; they have evolved the ability to survive exposure to high levels of PAHs, making it possible to inhabit Superfund sites in the Elizabeth River, Virginia.  In this system, our new paper explores the hypothesis that the evolution of resistance to one stressor makes organisms more susceptible to other stressors.  For more information, check out our paper here.

Dec 02
0

Marine mammal genomics in the UMaine news

By | Research

Check out this news article on our recent open-access paper on marine mammal genomics. The paper, co-authored by a group of international marine mammal scientists, summarizes two recent workshops on marine mammal genomics held at the Society for Marine Mammalogy Biennial Conferences in 2013 and 2015. We review the primary options for generating genomic data, introduce several emerging techniques, and discuss the suitability of each approach for different applications in the study of non-model organisms. The original paper published in the Journal of Heredity can be found here.