Deux communications orales le même jour ! (Two talks in one day!)

On Thursday this past week, two members of Team PODARCIS presented some of our research to different audiences. Since we scientists just love talks and seminars, this is one of the most important ways we can communicate what we’re doing and what we’re learning about the organisms we study. It was great to see our work being shared with two different groups of people on the same day!

Laura Kouyoumdjian (sadly now our former master’s intern, but always part of Team PODARCIS in her heart) presented at the 46e congrès de la Société Herpétologique de France (46^th Congress of the French Herpetological Society) in Carnoules en Provence. Laura’s talk was titled “Impact de l’hypoxie sur la gestation et le développement embryonnaire des squamates” (“The impact of hypoxia on gestation and embryonic development  in squamates”). Here, Laura presented the results of our experiments with both reproducing females and the development of their embryos from this past summer. She also incorporated some of the recent results on similar experiments in the snake Natrix maura conducted by our favorite doctorant en ecologie (pas en carton) Jérémie Souchet. Interestingly, these two squamates do not react the same to high-altitude hypoxia, suggesting that these responses may be specific to the life-histories and physiologies of each species (or even populations within species). Thus, there may not be a single set of expectations we can apply broadly, or even with closely-related taxa. It’s great to present this to an audience with such expertise and interest in French herpetofauna, especially given the potential conservation implications. I wasn’t able to be there, but based on Laura’s practice version and some first-hand reports, I know she did a tremendous job.

Laura presenting at the 2018 SHF meeting. Photo by Jérémie Souchet.

The same day, Brooke Bodensteiner presented as part of the Station d’Ecologie Théorique et Expérimentale’s weekly seminar series. She gave a great talk combining research on the painted turtle Chyrsemys picta she conducted while a master’s student in the lab of Fred Janzen at Iowa State University; her current work on Anolis lizards in the Caribbean that is part of her PhD research at Virginia Tech in the lab of Martha Muñoz; and some preliminary results from the work we’ve been doing here for the past six weeks (we'll post on that soon). It was great to see so many researchers from the station turn out for her seminar, even though many of the folks working on herps were at the SHF meeting. In combining studies at both macro- and micro-geographical scales, Brooke wove a narrative about how behaviour – be it nest site choice or thermoregulation – can play a buffering role between environment and physiology.

Brooke presenting at the SETE.

Congratulations to Laura and Brooke for their excellent work and presentations! For more on Project PODARCIS, I’ll be presenting a seminar at the Institut d’écologie et des sciences del’environnement de Paris (iEES de Paris) on December 7^th. The talk is titled “Integrating Temperature and Oxygen in Ectotherm Physiology” and will cover some of the results from the current PODARIS studies and ideas from my recent commentary paper with Rory Telemeco in Integrative and Comparative Biology. Stay tuned!