- Separating signal from noise in acoustic biodiversity surveys - 17/11/2020
- Sustainable redevelopment: visions of a post-lockdown world - 29/05/2020
- Pedagogy in Portugal - 07/02/2020
My first trip to Galway was eventful. A large delegation from TCD descended on Galway for the Irish Ecological Association’s ecology and evolution conference. Several PhD students, postdocs and professors from Trinity spoke about their research in short talks of either 5 or 10 minutes.
The conference itself was only the 2nd ever held by the Irish Ecological Association, and it’s great to see the society kicking things off so strongly. A running theme was the strength of Irish Research, and the humour and good will brought by all members. There were exciting workshops, including a full day statistics workshop run by our very own Ruth Kelly and Andrew Jackson, amazing plenary talks and even a refreshing nature walk in the middle of the day. Trinity’s talks included the history of Scots Pine in Europe, behaviour-manipulating parasites influencing ecosystem functioning, badger ranging behaviour, plant-pollinator interaction networks, plant population demography, invasive fish and parasite release, the evolution of sexual reproduction, the influence of zoo size on conservation investment, multiple stressors in marine mesocosms, and plant traits and demography under climate change. Together, these talks really highlighted the huge diversity of research happening at Trinity College Dublin.
We even finished in style, when a fire alarm interrupted the final talk. We came so close to successfully finishing the conference but were cut short at the last minute (well, the last 5-minute slot). But fire alarms couldn’t stop us from finishing procedures; we all gathered outside for the prize giving. Trinity did well again, with Andrew Mooney being highly commended for his 5-minute talk “Zoos: Does Size Matter?”. Then I also won the prize for best 10-minute talk for my talk “Urbanisation erodes ecoacoustic diversity and stability in Okinawa, Japan”. I know it’s not a big deal for a lot of people, but I haven’t ever won anything like this, and it felt really great to be recognised for my research (or at least my willingness to shout about it!). Of course, we also saw the sights (and drank the drinks!) of Galway and had a lot of fun in the process. About 13 of us stayed in an Airbnb nearby, and I just couldn’t stop thinking how much fun I was having just hanging out with my friends, meeting new people and talking about the awesome ecology and evolution work going on in Ireland and beyond.
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About the Author
Sam Ross is a PhD student in Ian Donohue’s research group in the Department of Zoology, Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on the effects of global change on ecological stability. Find out more about his research here:
Website | https://srpjr.wordpress.com/
Twitter | @SamRPJRoss
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ORCID | 0000-0001-9402-9119