PLEASE NOTE – November’s Marine Life Talk will break from tradition and take place on the second Thursday of the month – 12 November 2015
Evolution, climate and the fossil record: what plankton can tell us – speaker Anieke Brombacher
When we look at fossils, we can see some beautiful examples of how new species appear, evolve and eventually go extinct over time. But we know very little about what causes evolution, because it is such a difficult process to study directly. Most extinct species do not have a lot of fossils, so we get some snapshots of what they could have looked like, but it is much more difficult to tell how and why the species changed.
In her PhD, Anieke studies the evolution of a specific group of plankton called foraminifera, and how that relates to climate change. Foraminifera are perfect to study evolution because their shells are preserved in the sea floor sediment in huge numbers, providing us with incredibly detailed, continuous records of how entire species have evolved over time. By comparing species' evolution and extinctions to environmental variability, we can get new insights in the driving forces behind evolution.
Anieke Brombacher
Anieke is a third-year PhD student in Palaeobiology, and in her project she studies the driving forces behind evolution. After completing her Master's degree at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) Anieke moved to Southampton to work on the evolution of plankton. Her research interests include past climate variability and the interactions between species and their environment.
Next Marine Life Talk
3 December 2015
These talks are held on the first Thursday of each month (with the exception of this talk) at 7.30pm in the Henry Charnock Lecture Theatre, National Oceanography Centre. Please sign in outside the lecture theatre on level four.
All talks are free and open to members of the public.
These talks are accessible via stairs or a lift. Since the lift cannot be used in an emergency, evacuation of less able visitors is down the stairs via an evacuation chair. Please notify us in advance of the presence of a wheelchair user or anyone with access issues likely to require the use of an evacuation chair.
For further information, please contact:
Eileen Crockford – etc@noc.ac.uk
– tel: 023 8059 6100 or subscribe to NOCMAIL to receive FREE email updates and alerts for future Marine Life Talks and other marine related topics.