报告人：Dr. Christy Hipsley

报告时间：2018年10月15日（星期一）   下午14:00

报告地点：生命科学技术学院树华多功能厅（Shu Hua Multi-functional Hall）

联 系 人： 张大兵

Personnel Information:

Christy Hipsley received her PhD in 2012 from the University of California, USA, followed by a German Research Foundation-funded postdoc at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany. Since 2015, Christy has worked as an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Research Associate at Museums Victoria, where she uses their vast collections to reconstruct Australia’s evolutionary past. Her current research focuses on the long-term impacts of climate change in the Australian fossil record, by measuring variation in lizard and frog communities over geological time. Her recent work focuses on a different Australian animal group, the marsupials, in particular the extinct Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine.

For further information see: http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/hipsleylab/

Topic information:

Many large meat-eating marsupials roamed Australia over the past millions of years, but the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was the only one to survive into modern times. In this talk I will present some of the cutting-edge techniques used to reconstruct the life, growth and death of this recently extinct predator, including 3D digital imaging and ancient genome assembly. These methods provide new insights into the thylacine’s extraordinary position among mammals, such as its striking resemblance to wolves and dingos, its poor genetic health prior to the arrival of humans, and its relationship to other marsupials like the Tasmanian devil and numbat. This work has been featured widely in both popular and scientific press, demonstrating that the public’s interest in this unique marsupial is still very much alive.

References:

Feigin CY, Newton AH, Doronina L, Schmitz J, Hipsley CA, Mitchell KJ, Gower G, Llamas B, Soubrier J, Heider TN, Menzies BR, Cooper A, O’Neill RJ, Pask AJ. 2018. Genome of the Tasmanian Tiger provides insights into the evolution and demography of an extinct marsupial carnivore. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2:182-192.

Newton AH, Frantisek S, Prochazka J, Black JR, Medlock K, Paddle RN, Hipsley CA*, Pask AJ*. 2018. Letting the “cat” out of the bag: pouch young development of the extinct Tasmanian tiger revealed by X- ray computed tomography. Royal Society Open Science 5:171914. 24. *Joint senior authors