Although we can trace back the study of epidemics to the work of Daniel Bernoulli nearly two and a half centuries ago, the fact remains that key modeling advances followed the work of three individuals (two physicians) involved in the amelioration of the impact of disease at the population level a century or so ago: Sir Ronald Ross (1911) and Kermack and McKendrick (1927). Ross' interests were in the transmission dynamics and control of malaria while Kermack and McKendrick's work was directly tied in to the study of the dynamics of communicable diseases. In this presentation, I will deal primarily with the study of the dynamics of influenza type A, a communicable disease that does not present a “fixed” target. The study of the short-term dynamics of influenza, single epidemic outbreaks, makes use of extensions/modifications of the models first introduced by Kermack and McKendrick while the study of its long-term dynamics requires the introduction of modeling modifications that account for the continuous emergence of novel influenza variants: strains or subtypes. Here, I will briefly review recent work on the dynamics of influenza A/H1N1, making use of single outbreak models that account for the movement of people in the transmission process over various regions within Mexico. Next, I will discuss models that are tied in to the study of the long-term dynamics of influenza, models that account for outbreak-generated year-to-year shifts on the immunological profile of large populations, a process often referred to as cross-immunity. In particular, the role of cross immunity, population structure and interventions as drivers of sustained oscillations will be assessed. This research has been carried in collaboration with a large number of researchers over a couple of decades.

Through the advent of large plant trait databases, timetrees, and comparative analyses to handle such databases, we are gaining increasing insight into how plants evolved to thrive in different settings. I will discuss several projects in which I've been involved in which we examined the evolution of plant function (growth form, leaf construction, seed size, conduit anatomy) at a global scale, as well as where our existing resources currently fall short.

Well-sampled phylogenies now allow us to integrate various sources of geographic, ecological, and evolutionary information to understand the distribution of threat and diversity in species-rich groups. How divergent are individual species? How is evolutionary distinctiveness related to present-day imperilment? Are threats or diversity concentrated in areas we might not expect? I present data from the VertLife project, an NSF-sponsored, multi-institutional project to study the biodiversity of all terrestrial vertebrates (Tetrapoda), making them the first major global group of animals with near-complete species-level data on key evolutionary and ecological attributes. For squamate reptiles, amphibians, turtles, and crocodilians, extinction risk and phylogenetic position are related to each other in surprising ways. The geographic and ecological correlates of these patterns reveal pressing needs for further study, and insight for conservation.

The Western Ghats (WG) is one of the major global biodiversity hotspots, harbouring a rich diversity of flora and fauna many of which are endemic to the WG. The current understanding of the biogeographic history of WG comes from paleo-floral records and taxonomic diversity studies, but hasn’t been explored from a phylogenetic perspective. This was the inception of my study with the main aim to understand the imprints of biogeographic history on the phylogenetic diversity (PD) of the flora of Western Ghats. I first studied the PD patterns of local deciduous forest patches (Nandi Hills, Savandurga, and Devrayanadurga) to evaluate the usefulness of PD in the Indian context. Whereas other studies have shown that PD can be decoupled from taxon richness in biodiversity hotspots, my results showed this decoupling even in regions of low diversity. I then used these tools of community phylogenetics to analyze the patterns of PD across the WG. My premise was that if the deciduous forests of the WG are indeed more recently established than the evergreen forests (as literature suggests), then evergreen PD would be high and deciduous PD would be low. My results indeed show this pattern, corroborating this hypothesis. Within the evergreen belt, I found PD patterns that corroborate the southern refuge hypothesis, with higher PD in south compared to north. I also analyzed the phylogenetic turnover between these forests and showed that whereas the deciduous and evergreen taxa have shared evolutionary histories, the evergreen taxa from different forest types have quite disparate evolutionary histories. Phylogenetic endemism (PE) analysis (analyzing ranges of clades rather than taxa) showed that most paleoendemic plots are found south of 12-degree latitude indicative of refugial regions as postulated by the southern refuge hypothesis. Toward the north and south are clusters of neo- and paleo- endemism, which indicate that clades are restricted in distribution mostly in south, but also in north, with the central WG being a region of overlap of these ranges. My study is the first to provide a phylogenetic perspective toward understanding the biogeographic history of Western Ghats. It provides a fresh line of evidence corroborating current hypotheses and uncovered many interesting patterns which need further exploration, integrating tools from both community ecology and biogeography.

Soil salinity is a widespread problem throughout the world. Salinization makes productive land unproductive. The problem can be addressed by various means: chemical amelioration and structural engineering. However plant-based remediation is one of the emerging trends. Whereas non-plant based remediation can provide quick outcomes, plant-based remediation is slow, but is environmentally friendly and even less expensive. Plant-based remediation, more importantly and usefully helps recycling of nutrients and their build up. Keeping these in view, this talk would aim to explain the efforts made in this context in the intensely salinity affected agricultural landscape of central-western NSW.

This workshop would aim to clarify the importance of using an easily readable and a graceful prose in journal papers, since the quality of the language used by many non-native speakers of English is depressing. Given that English today has emerged as a world language for science communication, we cannot take things lightly and thus lose the opportunity of making a mark in the world of science. I emphasize this because writing an intelligible and a graceful prose is as important as reporting new findings. We need to recognize that papers get rejected not because of the quality of science reported, but because of the poor language used in papers. The question we need to remember here is, ‘If the text is not clear to the reader, then what purpose does reporting new results serve?’

Insect-induced plant galls were known to humans for long, mostly for use as drugs and for extracting ink-like material used in writing and painting. In the last few decades, we have brought to light scores of unknown gall systems and their inducing agents. Irrespective of the tremendous advances we have made in the demographic ecology of gall-inducing arthropods and the galls of inimitable morphologies, our efforts to characterize the mechanism of gall development has been tardy. Currently we have been reasonably successful in clarifying the steps in the physiology of gall growth and differentiation with the characterization of auxin and cytokinin precursors in the involved arthropod’s saliva. However, we have not been able to precisely clarify the earliest step involved — the triggering factor — which usually occurs within the first 24 h of attack of plant tissue by the inducing arthropod. While acknowledging the available explanations, this talk would summarize the existing knowledge and highlight the gaps that in the science of Cecidology. I propose to explore the world of arthropod-induced galls — unique and highly symmetrical natural sculptures — using examples from the Indian subcontinent. We need to recognize many questions remain to be answered.

Why is it that some species are found in some areas but not others? Answering this question is the task of biogeography and the answers fall into two main categories: that species dispersed to that area from elsewhere at some point in the past, or it has been there since it originated.
With the integration of data from fossils, phylogenies based upon both morphological and molecular data and palaeoenvironmental information, it is possible to offer explanations of why some species are found in particular areas and how they got there. The fossils permit the phylogenies to be time-calibrated and dated evolutionary events can be assessed in light of simultaneous environmental change.
I will illustrate these basic principles of biogeography initially with an example of long distance geodispersal: an obscure and rare group of bees found primarily in the Mediterranean region have all of their close relatives in the New World. I will suggest how they got to their currently occupied range.
Bees are more diverse in arid and semi-arid regions of the world and also more diverse in the southern hemisphere. I will explore the radiation of bees in the world’s driest desert – the Atacama Desert of Chile. Here, some bees must remain in diapause for many years before conditions are suitable for production of the next generation. I will give examples of unusual habitats that provide resources for bees in this otherwise inhospitable environment.
In most of the Atacama Desert the limited rainfall occurs in winter, but in the extreme northeast of the country, most rain falls in summer. I will investigate the potential influence of this disjunction on bee evolution.
Lastly, I will discuss the often remarkable adaptations bees have for foraging on desert plants and use dated phylogenies to investigate bee transition to the most speciose genus of flowering plants in the Atacama.

Animals communicating in the context of mate searching benefit by obtaining mates, but also experience costs. Studies on the effect of predation on such communication has largely been addressed in an evolutionary context. How individuals trade-off risks and benefits of communication in an ecological context has, however, received much less attention. In this context, my thesis aims at understanding the ecology of predator-prey interactions in the context of communication, using the tree cricket Oecanthus henryi as a model system. I first estimated the relative predation risk experienced by communicating and non-communicating, male and female crickets from their primary predators, green lynx spiders, at multiple spatial scales within a night. I then went on to manipulate predation risk in enclosure experiments and observed how it affects communication and survival, to compare their relative fitness consequences. Finally, I examined how crickets and spiders use space at two different spatial scales, in order to explore whether crickets behaviourally manage the risk they experience while searching for mates.

Conservation of native wildlife species remains a challenge in the face of continuing changes in climate and available habitats. Reptiles are likely to be particularly susceptible to environmental change due to their reliance on their environment to maintain body temperature and their limited ability to disperse relative to larger vertebrates. In addition, we know relatively little about the environmental requirements of many reptile species, which makes conservation planning difficult. Here, I use historical occurrence records to model species' historical (1900-1977) and contemporary (1986-2012) distributions using four Species Distribution Model approaches. Because these historical records are known to be biased, I then used a probability-based sampling design and five visual encounter survey methods to estimate occupancy while accounting for imperfect detection. I briefly discuss the benefits of this approach to future monitoring of reptile populations.