Animal and Plant Sciences Newsletter: Autumn 2015

Department Of Animal & Plant Sciences.

Life.

Newsletter

Autumn 2015.

THANKS FOR COMING TO AN OPEN DAY. We hope it helps you with making your decision.

Over the next few pages you can find out what’s new in Animal and Plant Sciences, and see what some of our staff and students have been getting up to recently.

There are also details, below, about our Departmental Open Days in December, February and March. We hope to see you again soon.

Best wishes, Dr Rhonda Snook Director of Admissions

Departmental Open Days If you apply for a place in this department, and you’re expected to meet our entry requirements, you’re invited to a Departmental Open Day. On these visits, you get to spend more time with staff and students, who will tell you about their courses and the research they do. There are also opportunities to explore the University campus and to visit our student accommodation.

APS open days are held between December and March – we get in touch with a choice of dates as quickly as we can once we receive your application, but we’ve also included them on this page so you can plan ahead. They’re a great opportunity for you to ask any questions you might have.

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Departmental Open Day dates – 2015/16 THURSDAY 10 DECEMBER THURSDAY 11 FEBRUARY MONDAY 15 FEBRUARY FRIDAY 19 FEBRUARY TUESDAY 1 MARCH TUESDAY 15 MARCH

Mark My Bird New website is mapping the bills of every bird species on the planet in 3D Ecology lecturer Dr Gavin Thomas is recruiting citizen scientists to help him with a hugely ambitious new project. He has launched a website, www.markmybird.org, which will feature 3D scans of the bills of every living species of bird in the world.

So far, Gavin and his research group have scanned in 4,000 species of bird, and they hope to reach 10,000 in the next 12 months. You can help by looking online at the scanned images and identifying features that are common to each species.

The data will help scientists learn more about birds and what bill evolution can tell us about the origin of species.

“There are 10,000 species of bird distributed around the world and they all possess a remarkably diverse and adaptable tool – the bill.

“The size and shape of the bill can betray the role an animal plays in its environment, what it feeds on and how it forages.

We want to learn more about how this diversity came to be and the evolution of a tool as adaptable as the bill is an important piece of the puzzle.

“Each landmarked scan adds to our understanding of the diversity of birds.”

Dr Gavin Thomas

WWW.MARKMYBIRD.ORG

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Your first year More practical sessions and research training from the start of your degree In September we welcomed another talented group of students onto our undergraduate degrees. And with our newly restructured level one programme, they’ll get to do more practical work than ever.

We’ve introduced more project work into the first year of our courses. In semester one, students will start learning professional scientific skills, such as how to measure environmental features and extract DNA. Then in semester two, they’ll put these skills into practice with a piece of group research: projects might look at whether ‘natural’ food colours really are natural, or at whether mammals of different ages and sexes are more or less susceptible to parasites.

There’ll still be lectures where students will learn important concepts, but they’ll be complemented by practical sessions that bring these ideas to life. We’re running classes on gene expression and adaptation, and a field trip to an aquarium off campus to study fish morphology.

We get you set up as a researcher from day one: the first week of term is spent on a field trip in the Peak District, where you’ll collect data, interpret your findings and present your conclusions as any other professional scientist would.

PICTURED: Level one students on their first week field course

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“We’ve always been research-led and we want students to learn the essential research skills right from the start of their degree.”

Dr Fiona Hunter Director of Learning and Teaching in Animal and Plant Sciences

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Project work Every student in APS works closely with our academic staff in their third year to complete an independent research project.

We asked Adam Gillis about his third year project, and the research he has planned for the fourth year of his MBiolSci degree.

“The project module in APS integrates you into one of the department’s many research groups to provide you with substantial hands-on experience of scientific research. This teaches you experimental design, data analysis and writing in the style of a scientific paper.

“My project involved investigating the development of the head crest produced in water fleas (Daphnia) in response to their predators. I measured its growth under exposure to a couple of chemicals known to interfere with similar hormonal pathways and cellular processes in other animals. Both of the drugs hampered the growth of the head crest, which was predicted for one of the drugs but not the other. Excitingly, this implicated some new physiological pathways that the research group are now investigating.

“Working under the supervision of world-leading scientists is daunting at first but soon becomes good fun. You are made to feel a part of the research team and participate in active areas of research rather than simply tasked with generating unoriginal results.

This made the work very exciting because you knew that your results could contribute to furthering the understanding of the field.

“For the final year of my MBiolSci I am studying mate choice and sexual selection in a group of butterflies called Heliconius. The structure is similar to the third year project except you work with a research group for the whole year, meaning you study a system in much more detail.

“An APS degree as a whole provides you with a solid core of biological knowledge whilst also promoting independent learning and degree personalisation thanks to the broad range of modules available to you. Providing this combination of core knowledge and hands-on research experience whilst retaining flexibility is rare, and so makes for a fantastic and highly rewarding degree.”

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Research round-up When they aren’t teaching, our staff are producing world class research.

Here are some of the latest findings from Animal and Plant Sciences.

Piercing teeth in vertebrates didn’t evolve from their scales New findings from Dr Gareth Fraser’s research with the Natural History Museum and other universities have questioned one of the most important theories in vertebrate history. They discovered that sharks’ teeth did not evolve from their scales as previously thought.

Scientists move a step closer to understanding species distributions in the face of climate change A team of international researchers, led by Dr Marjorie Lundgren, has moved one step closer to discovering how physiological attributes allow some plants to thrive in a variety of conditions – something that could be the key to future food sustainability.

Elephants born when mothers are stressed age faster and produce fewer offspring Dr Hannah Mumby and Dr Virpi Lummaa found that Asian elephants born at times when their mothers experience highest stress levels produce significantly fewer offspring in their lifetime despite having higher rates of reproduction at an early age.

READ THE FULL STORIES AT WWW.SHEFFIELD.AC.UK/NEWS

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STAY IN TOUCH +44 (0)114 222 0123 animal.plant@sheffield.ac.uk www.sheffield.ac.uk/aps