PBRC NEURODIVERSITY SEMINAR

This weekly meeting explores comparative and evolutionary aspects of the nervous sytem as components of biodiversity in the broad sense, in keeping with PBRC's focus on biodiversity research, training and outreach. Open to all interested students, faculty, postdocs, visitors, etc. "Journal club"-style format. Topics are chosen by participants and include discussion of current research as well as classic studies.

Each week we will discuss sevral papers centered around a chosen topic, attempting to use comparisons among different taxa to gain insight into the roles the nervous system plays in generating and sculpting biological divesity. Please contact Dan Hartline (danh at pbrc.hawaii.edu) if you would like to be added to the distribution list.

Simultaneously serving as a graduate seminar course (Zoology 712), officially enrolled students are given priority in choice of topics and presentation dates. Each is expected to lead at least two sessions in the course of a semester (1 unit of credit). Students enrolled for a letter grade will have their grade partly (e.g. 60%) dependent on the discussions they lead and partly on their knowledgeable participation in the other discussions.

SPRING 2012 MEETINGS

Meetings in Bekesy Lab Rm. 103A

Fridays at 2:15PM

This semester's theme: "Comparative and evolutionary neuroecology"

Each week (or two) we are focusing on a case inwhich the nervous system plays a pivotal role in adapting an organism to a particular ecological niche.

1. Material will be selected to emphasize the role of the nervous system in the ecological needs/niches of the organisms discussed. At least two approaches will be explored to linking in the "diversity" angle: comparison of neural adaptations in two closely related organisms inhabiting different niches or ecosystems (e.g. prarie vole vs montane vole) and comparison of convergently-evolved neural adaptations of markedly different organisms occupying similar ecological niches (e.g. marsupial vs placental wolves).

2. The approach will be a little different this semester from previous ones: We will locate several papers on the chosen subject and each will be assigned to one or more participants. One participant, the "subject leader," will be responsible for researching the general background on a topic (including terminology, etc) and the rest will provide the nitty gritty from various sources.

The first two meetings will be devoted to the group's choosing the subjects and papers to read, starting with suggestions for possible subjects, bolstered by one or two promising relevant papers. With this as background, further exploration of subject suitability will be made toward the end of mapping out a strategy, a list of subjects, an initial set of papers and dividing up the work of presenting and critically assessing the literature available.

A list of topics selected for discussion will be posted here once decided on

"Auditors" with interest/expertise in specific scheduled topics are welcome. Contact Dan for information on the likely presentation date.

(For PDFs of papers from this or previous semesters, point browser at http://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/~danh/Neurodiversity/)

Previous topics