2021 Prestigious Discovery Lecture: Spiders to Wrangle & Mountains to Climb

2021 Prestigious Discovery Lecture: Spiders to Wrangle & Mountains to Climb

Categories: General, Lectures and Seminars, Virtual | Intended for

Thursday, March 18, 2021

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Location Details

zoom link

Contact Information

Rima Mattar, 613-520-4388, rima.mattar@carleton.ca

Registration

Open - Register Now

Cost

$0

About this Event

Host Organization: Office of the Dean of Science

Understanding how ecological and social context shapes the evolution of species is a major focus in biology, with implications for understanding individual variation, species diversity and resilience to environmental change. Given that the currency of evolution is reproduction, sexual behaviours and traits can be key to understanding these dynamics. Maydianne Andrade discusses how her fundamental research on sexual behaviours and plasticity has leveraged the extreme mating systems of cannibalistic black widow spiders to gain insights into links between ecology and evolution. Of particular interest is how traits related to behaviour, life history, and physiology can shift as a function of cues that indicate challenges to fitness in varied habitats. Interwoven in this narrative is a parallel story about navigating, understanding, acknowledging, and then embracing what is means to be a scientist who is also a Black woman. Her experiences highlight the importance of role models, knowledge translation and outreach, and how the communication skills and perceived authority of scientists can be deployed, with intention, caution, and care, to engage with broader audiences.

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