Report on presenting a talk on the 11th International Congress on the Zoogeography
and Ecology of Greece and Adjacent Regions (ICZEGAR), September 2009.
Background
ICZEGAR is an event with already 30 years of history. The first of these was held in
1979 by the Hellenic Zoological Society and, in particular, by Prof. Ioannis Matsakis. During
these years, hundreds of scientists presented their research on different aspects of biodiversity
of the Eastern Mediterranean.
This year the Organizing Committee of the 11th ICZEGAR decided to enlarge the
scientific scope and the spatial range of the congress by giving the subtitle: “International
Congress on the Zoogeography, Ecology and Evolution of Eastern Mediterranean”. In total
the event had 81 oral presentations and 115 posters. The invited speakers comprised Carvalho
G.R (University of Bangor, UK), Fransson T. (Swedish Museum of Natural History,
Sweeden), Harzhauser M. (Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria), Heip C. (Royal
Netherlands Institute of Sea Research and Netherlands Institute of Ecology, The
Netherlands), Laland K.N. (University of St. Andrews, Scotland), de Queiroz K.
(Smithsonian Institute, USA), and Whittaker R.J. (University of Oxford, UK).
Support exclusively from The Arthur Hosier/Meyer Sasson Award Fund enabled me
to present my research in 11th ICZEGAR held in the Natural History Museaum of Crete in
Herakleion, Crete.
The Experience
I spent 5 days in Heraklion attending the 11th ICZEGAR. My aim was to get some
insights on the modern trends of the Zoogeography, Ecology and Evolution and to establish
some international networks in those scientific fields. Furthermore I presented my research in
a talk entitled “Learning about populations’ history using approximate Bayesian computation”. The
abstract was the following:
“Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a recent
developed Bayesian technique that can be used to extract
information from DNA data. This method has been firstly
introduced to Population Genetics in 1999. It relies in two
major approximations: the use of a simulated step that
substitutes the need for using an explicitly likelihood function;
and the summarization of DNA data with a set of summary
statistics. This Bayesian approach can be used to estimate
several historical demographic parameters from populations
using DNA data. A particular ABC method, similar to the one
used by Beaumont (2007), was applied to published data of
bonobos and chimpanzees (Won and Hey, 2005) that had
been studied before using different flavours of MCMC (Won
and Hey, 2005; Becquet and Przeworski, 2007 and Hey and Nielsen, 2007).
Two data sets of human populations from the Nicobar and Andamanese islands and Central Africa
have also been studied, as well as, one data set composed by 6 distinct species of spiny lobsters. The
ABC studies confirm the competitiveness of this recently explored Bayesian method when compared
to a standard MCMC approach. Its potential role on phylogeography and demography researches is
emphasized.
M. Beaumont. Joint determination of topology,
divergence time, and immigration in population
trees. In Simulation, Genetics, and Human
Prehistory, edited by S. MATSUMURA, P.
FORSTER and C. RENFREW. McDonald Institute
for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, 2007.
C. Becquet and M. Przeworski. A new method
to estimate parameters of speciation models,
with application to apes. Genome Research,
17:1505-1519, 2007.
J. Hey and R. Nielsen. Integration within the
Felsenstein equation for improved Markov
chain Monte Carlo methods in population
genetics. PNAS,
104:2785-2790, 2007.
J. K. Pritchard, M. T. Seielstad, A. Perez-Lezaun,
and M. W. Feldman. Population growth of
human Y chromosomes: a study of Y
chromosome microsatellites. Mol Biol Evol,
16:1791–1798, 1999.
< 2 Mya
Y. J. Won and J. Hey. Divergence population
genetics of chimpanzees. Mol Biol Evol, 22:297307, 2005.”
The conference had a very friendly atmosphere and it was prune to engage in
intellectually stimulating debates.
Closing comments
I would like to express deep gratitude to the Selection Committee for awarding me the
Arthur Hosier/Meyer Sasson Award, without which the presentation of my work in this
international conference would not be possible. I established strong links with several
scientists in my field of work which may reveal very important for scientific collaborations in
the future.