Today was the annual Assemblée Générale de BioGeCo, held at
the University of Bordeaux in Talence. This is the first day I've seen everyone present on their projects. Remy Petit, the BioGeCo leader for the past three years, opened with a statement on the unit as a whole. BioGeCo holds as its goal to “study the mechanisms governing the evolution of the
diversity of terrestrial ecosystems, from genes to communities,” and to “rebalance ecologie and genetics in a common evolutionary framework.” There is, of course, a very strong tree focus here, and there is a long history of forestry research here.
Today, there are 109 people employed at BioGeCo, 68 salaried (43% lead-researchers, 57% engineers and technicians), 21 PhD students, 18 postdocs and
contract researchers. From 2009 to 2014, increased by 4 chercheurs and 5
engineers.
I made just a few notes on projects that were of interest to me. This is neither exhaustive nor representative, only things that caught my interest:
Highlights in GEMfor [Cécile Robin]
·
Sequencing 150 species of pathenogenic fungi
·
Studying the evolution of natural history traits
(niche differentiation, virulence) using experimental and modeling approaches,
in the light of climate change and colonization of novel environments and
regions
·
The effect of parasitic fungi (oïdium) in the
evolution of oaks
·
Horizontal and vertical transmission of
microorganisms in oaks
·
Role of microorganisms in the health of the
plant (e.g., invisibility of the community by pathenogenic species); this, tied
in with climate change, by looking at microfungal community changes in response
to climatic variation
Highlights in Ecologie des Communautés [Emmanuel Corcket]
·
13 permanent positions (including 9 chercheurs,
3 engineers, 1 technician [?]), 9 contractual
·
Interested in both the distributional (patterns,
processes underlying patterns) and functional (e.g., interactions) components
of biodiversity, and the interactions between communities and their
environments in both directions (e.g., responses to climate change, effects on
nutrient and water cycling)
·
Are trees a countryside (‘paysage’) for
bacterial communities?
·
Impacts of atmospheric deposits on prairie
(‘prairiale’) biodiversity in the Pyrenees.
·
Latitudinal distribution of birds and bats
·
Bird predation and trophic cascades
·
Effects of plant phylogenetic diversity on
herbivory depend on herbivor specialization
·
Interaction between host / nonhost abundance and
insect invasion in pines
·
Restoration as a tool for environmental
remediation and effects on ecosystem processes
·
Risk analysis: movements of forest insect
herbivores; effects of forest insect herbivores on plant growth
·
Herbivory-resistance traits
·
Indirect effect of invasive insects on the
diversity of insular [endemic?] forest birds on Corsica
Ecologie et Génomique Fonctionnelles (EGF) [Annabel Porté]
·
23 permanents; 93 publications in 2011-2013
· The interaction between genotype and phenotype
that affects adaptation
·
Strategy: produce and integrate understanding on
function and structure…
·
Cavitation resistance in pines
o
Genetic architecture (QTL)
o
Physiological
o
Leaf phenology
o
Phylogenetic distribution
·
QTLs underlying budbreak [? – debourrement]
·
Rapid evolution of populations
·
Artificial selection and its effects on genomic
architecture of differentiations
·
A genetic map for oaks with higher density of
markers
o
Genomic signature of adaptation and speciation
in oaks
o
A phylogeny of the genus Quercus
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