Belgium

Seabirds are considered sentinels of marine ecosystem health. Black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) have experienced population declines as a result of prey shortages due to changing oceanographic conditions. Since 2019, a collaborative study on heart rate in black legged kittiwakes has been conducted by scientists at McGill University, University of Liverpool, University of Roehampton, and McMaster University at the Institute of Seabird Research and Conservation on Middleton Island, Alaska. To examine the indirect physiological effects of prey shortages, we used heart rate as a proxy of oxygen consumption and fine scale energetics. The recent development of a new prototype logger for birds has significantly improved data quality, with a 99% accuracy rate between manual and automatic heart rate measurements. In 2024, 45 kittiwakes were implanted with heart rate loggers and gps-accelerometers to identify which behaviours (flight, resting, etc.) required the most energy during different stages of the breeding season. Flapping flight was identified as the most energy-costly behaviour in kittiwakes, which is performed mainly during the chick-rearing stage. To examine the affect of supplemental feeding, 30 kittiwakes that were implanted with heart rate loggers were fed capelin three times a day for 10 days. Heart rate and body temperature differed significantly between fed and unfed birds after a feeding event. Our work will provide novel insights into the use of heart rate as a novel proxy of energetics and help to identify tipping points in which declines in prey availability could result in an energy deficit in kittiwakes and other seabirds.

SEB Conference 2025

Heart rate as a proxy of metabolic rate in black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla)at Middleton Island, Alaska

body temperature

seabirds

energetics

ecophysiology

heart rate

technical paper

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SEB’s Annual Conference is celebrated for creating the perfect composition of research, new discoveries and collaborative connections. Be creative and innovative by exchanging ideas and knowledge with masters of biology from all over the world.

Understanding the physiological mechanisms of metabolic regulation of body temperature during heat stress is an increasingly urgent challenge as climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of extreme heat events (EHEs). Biologging technology enables exploration of physiological tradeoffs between thermoregulation and energy expenditure in extreme environments. We assessed physiological and behavioral responses of desert bighorn sheep by capturing, collaring, deploying rumen implant transmitters (RITs), and re-releasing 49 free-living wild individuals from multiple ecologically and genetically distinct populations. RITs recorded heart rate and body temperature, the collar recorded external temperature of the individual, the accelerometers collected activity data, and nearby weather stations tracked ambient temperature. Both collar temperature and ambient temperature captured an unprecedented natural EHE widely documented in summer 2021 in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada. I will showcase thermal and energetic responses before, during, and after the heat event by first describing trends in individual strategies (thermoregulating, thermoconforming, behaviorally regulating, and altering activity), and defining significant drivers of individual variation (demographical, nutritional, genetic, and immunological traits) using generalized additive mixed models. I will outline my intended approach to validate my findings using an unsupervised clustering algorithm adapted for longitudinal data for creating functional profiles of animals who respond similarly to the EHE; common explanatory traits will be identified for each time step. Leveraging biologger technology and a natural case study, we will elucidate the effects of physiological stress and the energetic strategies for coping with EHEs in a wild population for effective conservation and management.

Heat Dome Danger: Investigating differences in metabolic and thermoregulatory response to a extreme heat event

Invasive species are organisms that spread, often human-mediated, from their native range into novel environments where they become established and often cause ecological (and economic) damage, including competition with native species for space, food, and survival. One of these species is the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus), a fish introduced into both fresh and brackish waters around the world. To understand how round goby will perform in the ocean, if they continue to spread into this higher-salinity environment, we investigated how individuals differ in their physiological and behavioural (co)sensitivity to changes in salinity. We measured the physiology (metabolic rates, growth) and behaviour (activity, dispersal, exploration) of 77 individual round goby after acclimation to each of five salinities (0, 10, 19, 24, 28 ppt) in the laboratory and quantified trait variation and sensitivity to salinity as their reaction norm intercepts (at 10 ppt) and slopes. We find that the fastest-growing individuals at 10 ppt—the salinity the fish were caught at—are also the most behaviourally active and explorative at this salinity, and thus more likely to spread to new locations and dominate. However, at salinities higher than 15 ppt, these individuals lose their growth advantage and are faced with the most severe reductions in aerobic metabolic scope relative to conspecifics. This cross-over at 15 ppt for which phenotypes have the performance advantage is likely to determine the trait composition of round goby populations, the selective pressures acting on these (combinations of) traits, and thus the continued invasion success of the species.

Individuals of the invasive round goby face physiological and behavioural trade-offs in their sensitivity to salinity

In the lab, diet has been found to greatly influence cognition, particularly during development. Specifically, high-fat high-sugar (HFHS) diets reduce learning and memory. One of the processes through which this occurs is the gut-brain axis, where the gut-microbiome influences how animals make decisions, such as during spatial exploration and navigation. In urban environments, species such as pigeons are often exposed to HFHS diets. In this study, we provided a HFHS diet and a control diet for 4 weeks to two groups of young racing pigeons, after which they all received the control diet (n=96). During treatment, the two groups did not differ in their gut-microbiota diversity, but from week 5 onwards young pigeons exposed to the HFHS diet had a higher gut-microbiota diversity than those raised on the control diet. When individuals were trained to return to their home loft, unlike what we predicted, individuals on the HFHS diet were (1) faster at finding the home loft, (2) faster at learning, (3) explored less and were (4) less cohesive and coordinated than individuals in the control group. Diet induced gut-microbiota diversity changes could explain behavioural differences in both social and individual navigation.

High-fat high-sugar diets and their effects on the gut microbiota and cognition of feral pigeons (Columba livia domestica)

Stressors such as artificial light-at-night (ALAN) affect both terrestrial and aquatic systems and are often associated with increased infrastructure and development. Coral reefs, which are often close to areas of rapid coastal development, are therefore prone to significant exposure to these stressors, however, the metabolic and behavioural effects of ALAN on coral reef fish are somewhat understudied. In this study, we used virtual reality (VR) to visually simulate exposure to various cues in two reef fish, Amphiprion chrysopterus and Dascyllus trimaculatus. Behavioural data was collected during and after exposure to a sandy environment (baseline) and simulated stimuli (conspecific, heterospecific, and predator) in fish previously exposed either to ALAN or to ambient light levels (control). In addition, for A. chrysopterus, metabolic and activity data were collected during and after exposure to a simulated predator. In behavioural trials, ALAN-exposed fish tended to be less risk averse, showing greater tendency to approach heterospecifics and predators. In behavioural trials in A. chrysopterus, ALAN-exposed fish were more active when exposed to a baseline stimulus but did not show an activity increase in response to stimuli, while control fish increased activity level. In respirometry trials, activity level was significantly reduced in both control and ALAN-exposed A. chrysopterus when exposed to a predator cue. Metabolic rate, however, was reduced significantly more in control compared with ALAN-exposed fish, during and after exposure. ALAN-exposed fish overall appear to be less responsive to predator cues, possibly due to higher metabolic demand associated with increased nocturnal activity leading to greater risk-taking.

Effects of artificial light-at-night on metabolic and behavioural response to simulated stimuli in reef fish 

Mechanical deformations of DNA are ubiquitous in Biology and occurs as part of critical processes involved in the reading, repair, copying, and packaging of genetic information. Therefore, such processes may be regulated by the local mechanical pliability of DNA to accommodate physical deformations. We have developed high-throughput technology to measure how local sequence impacts local DNA bendability via a “mechanical code”. We show that via the mechanical code, genomes encoded regulatory information impacting diverse cellular processes such as gene expression, nucleosome organization and remodelling, transcription factor binding, and DNA supercoiling by topoisomerases. We are currently exploring how chemical alterations to DNA such as via epigenetic modifications or DNA damage may alter the mechanical code, resulting in downstream functional consequences. We are also investigating how variations in DNA mechanics impact the genome-wide variations in DNA supercoiling, ultimately allowing environmental factors that control supercoiling to impact broad cellular gene expression programmes in complex ways. Overall, we advance our understanding of how physical forces have impacted the evolution of genomes.

Deciphering the mechanical code of DNA and its impact on cellular processes

PhD research is the backbone of disciplinary innovation within the higher education sector of the UK and beyond. With planned economic growth, and increased research funding expected in the UK, more PhD students are required to meet this demand and deliver these projections. The perception of the research student experience, particularly within the social media sphere, is often negative, and with the ongoing mental health challenge experienced by PhD students, honest discussions around the reality, benefits and commitments are required to ensure better preparedness for prospective students. Here I present a Science Friday (SciFri) initiative whereby PhD research students are given an opportunity to discuss their projects to small groups of interested undergraduate students within the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast. These sessions were delivered weekly during term-time over a series of four weeks across two semesters. All participants stated the benefits of the sessions which provided undergraduates with a unique opportunity to develop a rapport with research students, enabling them to identify day-to-day information on the research student experience. Interestingly, participants mentioned the importance these sessions were to develop novel connections with other students and researchers, developing their sense of belonging within the school, and even fostering new research collaborations. This study demonstrates how universities can leverage on the expertise already available to them to encourage student preparedness and success, as well as to foster an improved sense of belonging.

Science Fridays (SciFri): Supporting Research Expectations and Insights through Student-driven Discussions

As agricultural practices diversify and climatic variability increases, traditional variety evaluation methods struggle to capture genotype-specific advantages across diverse agro-environments. The historical focus on a limited number of elite varieties does not align with the need for locally adapted cultivars tailored to specific climate scenarios and management practices.
This talk explores how integrating phenotyping, modeling, and envirotyping can improve the evaluation and prediction of genotype performance under variable agro-climatic conditions. Key approaches include (i) model-based envirotyping to cluster environments based on plant-perceived conditions, (ii) crop modeling with high-throughput phenotyping-derived variety parameters, and (iii) genomic prediction for new genotypes in unexplored conditions. While these methods have been academically demonstrated, their application to operational variety evaluation remains underdeveloped. By trying to bridge this gap, we could refine registration and recommendation processes to better align with the needs of farmers and climate-resilient agriculture.

Enhancing Variety Evaluation: Integrating Phenotyping, Modeling, and Envirotyping for Adaptation tospecificAgro-Environmental scenarios

Root growth angle (RGA) plays a critical role in drought resilience by regulating water/nutrient uptake. This study deciphers the genetic basis of RGA in tetraploid wheat, comparing cultivars (CVS) and Triticum turgidum landraces (TDL) to pinpoint breeding targets for drought adaptation. We characterize RGA diversity, haplotype stacking, in durum wheat using GWAS (90K SNP array), KASP validation, and multi-omics (transcriptomics, gene ontology. CVS (61.44°–77.05°) showed lower RGA diversity and plasticity than TDL (57.63°–78.24°), with 7 high-confidence QTLs in CVS versus 13 in TDL. KASP-validated QTLs on 2A (QRGA.ubo.2A.2), 6A (QRGA.ubo.6A.2), and 7A (QRGA.ubo.7A.2) revealed haplotype-specific alleles for narrow (steep) and wide (shallow) RGA, demonstrating stacking potential for trait optimization. Narrow RGA improved deep-water uptake under terminal drought while indirectly supporting yield. Multi-omics implicated conserved phosphorus-response pathways (PHR1, CLE14) and ROS-hormonal interplay (auxin, ALMT1) in RGA regulation, with narrow RGA genotypes enhancing phosphorus foraging in deficient soils. Co-localized QTLs for yield, biomass, and grain quality underscored RGA’s pleiotropic impact on resource efficiency.

Dissecting the Root Growth Angle QTLome in tetraploid Wheat (Triticum turgidumssps) as a Key Component of Drought Stress Resilience

A lot of our knowledge about how long orthodox seeds can survive in long-term cold (-20°C) storage in seed (gene) banks comes from studies on crop species. A clear advantage of focusing research on crops is that it is easy to access large, homogenous seed lots. While the general principles behind seed storage broadly apply to wild orthodox species, improving our understanding of seed longevity for wild species has challenges, including the ability to acquire sufficient quantities of seeds, more heterogenous responses, and dormancy. This in turn hampers our ability to optimize conservation protocols, for example in terms of making decisions about when to monitor viability or when to archive an accession and make a new collection. Some of these issues will be discussed in the context of our research on diverse species for improved ex situ plant conservation.

Understanding seed longevity for improved ex situ plant conservation

Energetics is fundamental to ecology and evolution, and metabolic rates are broadly considered as insightful functional traits in an ecological and evolutionary context. The study of energetics – how organisms acquire, convert and use energy to sustain life processes – and the measurement of metabolic rates provides key insights into costs of living. Making those measurements, at least for some taxa, has long been considered too difficult to gain these insights and the energetics of plants, and in particular, seeds (i.e. embryonic plants) is less well studied.  Through our research, we have demonstrated differences in metabolic rates between batches of seeds with known ratios of live and dead seeds, indicating the potential use of the technique in assessing seed viability. This simple relationship between live and dead seeds and their metabolic rates has been extended to test the metabolic consequences of seed aging, and we have shown that establishing a relationship between seed respiration and longevity is possible, but still complex. Recently, we have investigated interspecific variation in seed metabolic rates, including exploring the relationship between seed mass and metabolic rates. We show that while metabolic rates of seeds scale in the same manner demonstrated in many other taxa, the relationship in seeds is much more variable. We found significant influences of phylogenetic-relatedness and climate on this relationship, and also potential effects of seed dormancy that are yet to be fully understood. We suggest that the measurement of whole-seed metabolic rates has potential as an emerging functional trait in seed biology.

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Heat Dome Danger: Investigating differences in metabolic and thermoregulatory response to a extreme heat event

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