Időpont: 2019. március 28. (csütörtök) 11:00 óra
Helyszín: a Veszprémi Akadémiai Bizottság székháza, Veszprém, Vár u. 37.

Caitlin Gabor (Texas State University):
Two fishy tails: Geographic variation in behavior, stressand life history traits of livebearing fish

In this talk I will talk about two related but disparate components of my research program. First I will talk about how geographic variation in species recognition over time affects the speciation process in a livebearing species complex. This complex consists of a unisexual gynogenetic fish the Amazon molly, Poecilia formosa, and the bisexual parent species sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna. The Amazon molly is an all-female species that must mate with males of their parent species but the males gain no genetic benefits  from  these  matings.  As  such  Amazon  mollies  are  essentially  sexual  parasites.Male  sailfin mollies prefer to mate with conspecific females in most sympatric populations but show varying levels of mating mistakes across their broad geographic distribution. I will review almost 20 years of data on consistency  of  species  recognition  temporally  (evolutionary  time  scale)  and  geographically.  
In  the second part of the talk I will discuss the consequences of human-induced habitat alteration from land use  conversion  on  stress  in  the  common  livebearing  mosquitofish,  Gambusia  affinis.  Urbanized environments  produce run-off that introduces pollutants  and  alters  water temperature, chemistry, and hydrology which can affect the physiological stress response of fish by elevating or dysregulating their primary stress hormone, cortisol. I will discuss our findings on geographic variation in baseline cortisol release rates, stress response (to agitation) and life history plasticity in mosquitofish.