October 2014 ISSUE 14 ISSN 2324-5670

PaleofantasyThe next speaker in the Allan Wilson Centre (AWC) public lecture series, biologist and writer Dr Marlene Zuk, tours the country 31 October to 13 November. An engaging and highly talented science communicator, Marlene will be speaking about the subject of her latest book, entitled Paleofantasy – What evolution really tells us about sex, diet and how we live.

Paleofantasy is Marlene’s fourth book for a general audience. Her own research into animal behaviour and evolution, in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour at the University of Minnesota, often uses insects as subjects, and her third book, Sex on Six Legs (2011), subtitled ‘Lessons on life, love, and language from the insect world’ brought fascinating stories from recent work to a public audience. Insects are difficult to anthropomorphise as they are so very different to us - and Marlene sees this as a real advantage in her studies of behaviour. Insect subjects provide a window into how completely different evolutionary pathways have resulted in similar behavioural outcomes. As more is learnt about insect behaviour, Marlene writes, ‘insects are starting to answer the question of ‘what does it take?’ – to have a personality, to learn to teach others, to change the world around them – with the humbling and perplexing answer, ‘Not much. Humbling because they do things with brains the size of a pinhead, and perplexing because if that’s all it takes, what does that mean for us, with our gigantic forebrains and exhaustingly long periods of childhood dependency?’

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sue Same and Different:

a new powerpoint teacher resourceAn introduction to the rules of heredity, for Years 6 and up

Dr Anna Santure has flown back homewith 8 more years experience of bird population genetics

Africa to Aotearoa - all is revealed at Government HouseThe mitochondrial tribes of Wellington gather at Government House

Shanna Rose and Stephanie Price – takahe and tuatara translocationsShanna and Stephanie are working on pathogens affecting native birds and adaptation of tuatara to their new mainland homes

Ridding New Zealand of rats: the next 50 yearsAre rat-free mainland islands now realistic targets within the next 50 years?

Pg 3 Pg 3 Pg 4 Pg 6 Pg 8

Dr Marlene Zuk, Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour at the University of Minnesota.

Photo credit UGA News Service

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In Paleofantasy, Marlene takes a hard, and often very funny, look at current popular theories that argue that our bodies and behaviours are letting us down in our modern world, largely due to the speed of recent cultural changes. These arguments hark back to a distant past when we were more in tune, better adapted, to our environment. The hugely popular Paleo DietTM, for example, according to its website, is based upon ‘everyday, modern foods that mimic the food groups of our pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer ancestors’. Many of these theories assume that we are best suited to a stone-age hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and view the origins of agriculture as the beginning of a downward slide towards the present. In her upcoming talk, and in detail in Paleofantasy, Marlene explores these arguments in the context of our understanding of how evolution works, and factual knowledge of the human past, revealing the basic misunderstanding about evolution in these ideas – that we are stuck in our modern societies, no longer evolving, cave people trapped in the wrong environment.

public talks by pROFEssOR MaRlEnE Zuk

AucklAnd Friday 31 October, 6.15pm, Auckland Museum Events Centre, $20 for general public, $10 for Auckland Museum Institute members or students with ID

Wellington

Monday 03 November, 6.00pm, Embassy Theatre, $20 for general public, $10 for students with ID

PAlmerston north

Tuesday 04 November, 6.30pm, Palmerston North City Library

nelson

Wednesday 05 November, 6.00pm, Old St Johns, 320 Hardy Street

hAmilton

Thursday 06 November, 6.30pm, Playhouse Theatre, Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, University of Waikato

tAurAngA

Friday 07 November, 6.30pm, Baycourt Exhibition Space, Baycourt Community & Arts Centre

christchurch

Monday 10 November, 6.30pm, Lecture Theatre C1, University of Canterbury

dunedin

Wednesday 12 November, 6.30pm, College of Education Auditorium, University of Otago, Union Street East

Bookings: To ensure a seat, and to purchase tickets (Auckland and Wellington only), go to: http://www.allanwilsoncentre.ac.nz. Click ‘Register Online’ under ‘Events’. Reservations are essential for the Tauranga event for catering purposes.

Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Everyone is fond of paleofantasies, stories about how humans lived eons ago, and we use them to explain why many elements of our lives, from the food we eat to the way we raise our children, seem very distant from what nature intended. But popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence, and they reflect a basic misunderstanding about how evolution works. There was never a time when everything about us – our bodies, our minds, and our behaviour – was perfectly in synch with the environment.

Marlene Zuk is a biologist and writer. She is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour at the University of Minnesota, where her research focuses on animal behaviour and evolution, mostly using insects as subjects. Dr Zuk is interested in the ways that people use animal behaviour to think about human behaviour, and vice versa, as well as in public understanding of evolution.

Paleofantasy - what evolution tells us about modern life

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EAnna is interested in using mathematical and statistical

tools to solve biological problems, especially in population and quantitative genetics. Quantitative traits are characteristics, such as height and weight, which show a range of variation within a population and result from the interactions among many genes and environmental factors.

Anna’s doctoral research (with AWC Director Hamish Spencer) focused on genomic imprinting - the ‘silencing’ of one of the two inherited copies of a gene - and how this affects quantitative traits. She is continuing this work, currently working on models and statistical techniques to evaluate the effects of genomic imprinting on quantitative traits in wild populations. With colleagues, including AWC Principal Investigator Ian Jamieson, Anna is also working on projects which explore the genetic basis of reproductive and morphological characters in two endangered New Zealand bird species, the hihi (stitchbird) and toutouwai (Stewart Island robin).

Before moving to Auckland, Anna’s research at the University of Sheffield concentrated on examining the genetic basis of

quantitative traits in a bird population, the great tit (Parus major). The birds have been the subject of a long-term study, and Anna was able to use genomic tools alongside the recorded life history traits and measurements such as wing span and body size, to tease out the underlying genetic basis or ‘architecture’ of these quantitative traits. Anna is particularly interested in how an understanding of this genetic architecture of quantitative traits in wild populations might be used to predict how these species are likely to respond to future climate changes.

Dr Anna Santure has flown back home

Toutouwai (Stewart Island robin)

Dr Anna Santure

Some people can roll their tongue

Some people have frecklesSome people can ‘t Some people don’t

Allan Wilson Centre Education Adviser, Barbara Mavor

Teachers: make life a little easier for yourself and introduce your students to the basic rules of heredity in an intriguing manner at the same time. Allan Wilson Centre education adviser, Barbara Mavor, has been commissioned to produce a powerpoint (CD is available), with notes and class exercises, that teachers can use from Years 6 upwards. Students are bound to like it, because it’s about THEM, and explains simple rules of heredity, using classmates, muggles and wizards for comparison. So take advantage of this thoughtfully prepared resource, and give us some feedback. And we’d love to hear about ideas for other classroom resources. So take advantage...and please give us some feedback. Email Allan Wilson Centre administrator Lorraine Bergen: l.bergen@massey.ac.nz

Same and Different: a new powerpoint teacher resource

Dr Anna Santure re-joins the AWC this year as an Affiliate Investigator. Anna has recently returned to New Zealand to take up a position in the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Auckland, after several years working in the UK. Anna has a background in mathematics and genetics, and was a member of the AWC as a University of Otago PhD student from 2002 - 2006.

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Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith revealed the DNA results of 100 Wellingtonians at a special event at Government House on 27 August. DNA contributors Sir Jerry Mateparae, Sir Anand Satyanand, Mayor of Gisborne Meng Foon, and Dr Bronwen Kelly, agreed to have their individual results discussed and compared as part of the presentation. They each gave an account of what they knew of their ancestry.

Sir Jerry was intrigued by his small Mediterranean percentage, while Sir Anand and Meng Foon found their maternal and paternal lineages consistent with their Indian and Chinese origins. No surprises there.

Guests enjoyed seeking out, and being photographed with, other members of their maternal mitochondrial tribe, and fancied they bore close physical resemblance to one another. By far the most dominant maternal haplogroup was the H line (42% of the sample), to which 40-50% of Western Europeans belong. Several branches of this lineage are associated with the mid to late-Neolithic agricultural expansion – the burgeoning farming population moved westward, swamping the existing hunter gatherer populations sparsely distributed through Europe. A density distribution map of the H group shows how other H lineages were squeezed into southern France and Spain by huge advancing ice sheets, and then spread out again after the ice melted 10,000 years ago.

Our co-existence and co-mingling with other branches of humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, is clearly evident in our DNA. All non-Africans have up to 5% of each type. There was also much interest at Government House in comparing relative percentages of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. Exactly what this remnant DNA codes for is under investigation.

Lisa is now over halfway through her sampling of 2000 New Zealanders, but has already shown that our population includes almost all of the main lineages that split off and dispersed after our ancestors left Africa about 60,000 years ago. Just as with plants and other animals, there is strength and resilience in a population with genetic diversity. We are descendants of countless generations of ancestors who faced every conceivable threat but survived long enough to reproduce, and who ultimately made the longest, and perhaps most dangerous journey, to find new land and opportunities.

Africa to Aotearoa - all is revealed at Government House

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Shanna Rose Shanna’s project addresses an important question raised

by Zoe Grange’s doctoral work on takahē translocations. Translocation is an important conservation strategy used in New Zealand and involves transporting endangered species from one location to another safer environment. Zoe’s project (profiled in Pheno Issue 6) examines the effects of translocations on bird health by identifying pathogens present in takahē populations, and in their home and new environments. Zoe found that individuals from an island population of takahē tested positive for strains of Salmonella, bacteria that are pathogenic for many different animal species,

The Allan Wilson Centre’s national network is made up of over 100 researchers, working in seven institutions throughout the country. This large network means that our graduate students have the opportunity to interact with many scientists outside of their home institution. The AWC has an internship fund, set aside for graduate students, to support them while visiting our partner institutions, enhancing their learning opportunities and access to advanced technical expertise in many different project areas.

This year, interns Shanna Rose, a Master of Science student supervised by Principal Investigator Nicky Nelson, Victoria University of Wellington, and Stephanie Price, also from Nicky’s group, worked at the mEpiLab at Massey University, Palmerston North. The mEpiLab (The Molecular Epidemiology and Public Health Laboratory) is led by AWC Principal Investigator Nigel French, and is located within the Hopkirk Research Institute – a collaborative venture between Massey University and AgResearch, which opened in 2007. The Hopkirk Institute provides state-of-the-art scientific facilities for research focusing on the control of parasitic and infectious diseases in animals, and food poisoning pathogens affecting New Zealanders. Members of the mEpiLab combine their skills in many fields including epidemiology, microbiology, molecular biology, veterinary science and public health to study disease-causing organisms such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, E. coli and Giardia.

including humans, and are readily transferred between different host species.

One of the strains of Salmonella identified in takahē by Zoe has previously only been detected in reptiles in New Zealand. Shanna is investigating whether lizards (geckos and skinks) present in the takahē’s environment harbour this and other Salmonella strains, and act as a reservoir for these pathogens. She began her project earlier this year with fieldwork to collect samples from lizards in three locations: on the off-shore island where Salmonella had been found in takahē individuals, in Fiordland, at the Burwood Bush Takahē Rearing Unit in Te Anau, and on Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds, another important island refuge. As Salmonella can also persist in the environment, Shanna collected samples from soil and water in each location.

The AWC internship at the mEpiLab provided Shanna with the equipment and expertise needed to analyse the samples she had collected, and she has now isolated Salmonella from eight environmental and lizard samples. Over the next few months Shanna will be busy examining these isolates in detail through the use of whole genome sequencing, to identify the strains present and compare these to the strains found in the takahē.

Two years ago, Nicky Nelson and others at Victoria University worked with Ngāti Kōata and the Department of Conservation to plan and carry out a large tuatara translocation project. While fossil evidence has shown that tuatara were once widespread throughout New Zealand, wild populations have only survived to the present day on off-shore islands. The translocation project in 2012, the first of its kind, moved 220 adult tuatara from the largest existing population on Takapourewa (Stephens Island) in the Marlborough Sounds, to five new locations.

Shanna Rose and Stephanie Price – takahe and tuatara translocations

Photo by Thomas Burns

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Stephanie PriceStephanie Price’s doctoral research involves monitoring

the tuatara at the new locations, examining how well they are fitting in to their new environments. One particular concern is the tuatara’s response to the new warmer and drier climates at three of the translocation sites – considerably further north than their home island. These changes in climate may provide valuable insights into how a warmer climate throughout the country in future could affect tuatara populations. The species is cold-adapted and has temperature-dependent sex determination; only males are produced as the temperature rises, leaving tuatara particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Another aspect of Stephanie’s work focuses on the health of the tuatara post-translocation. She has taken samples from tuatara in each of the four North Island translocation sites, as well as the source population on Takapourewa and a control population at the Zealandia wildlife sanctuary in Wellington, and is examining these for the presence of bacterial pathogens Salmonella and Campylobacter. Stephanie’s internship at the mEpiLab enabled her to use culturing and serotyping techniques to test for Salmonella, and molecular methods to identify Campylobacter in the tuatara samples. Stephanie’s work is now continuing with analyses of the parasite load of the animals at the different sites, and leukocyte counts to look at their immune function. This research into the health of the tuatara post-translocation, across the different new environments, will aid in conservation work for the species in general, and in planning future translocation efforts.

The Allan Wilson Centre is excited and proud to announce that it has secured four top international scientists to tour New Zealand in 2015, including the very eminent geneticist, Steve O’Brien – exact touring dates are under negotiation. If you want to register to receive advance information about these talks, email awc-lectures@massey.ac.nz stating your city of residence in the subject line.

The speakers, in possible arrival order, are:• SteveO’Brien,St.PetersburgState

University (Genome 10K Project)

• HopiHoekstra,HarvardUniversity

• TomHigham(aKiwi),UniversityofOxford

• ScottEdwards,HarvardUniversity

STOP

the presses

4 top scientists booked for 2015

Steve O’Brien

Tom Higham

Hopi Hoekstra

Scott Edwards

Allan Wilson CentreScience Tower B, Level 2, Massey University, Private Bag 11 222, Palmerston North 4442, New ZealandPhone | 06 350 5448Fax | 06 350 5626awc-lectures@massey.ac.nzwww.allanwilsoncentre.ac.nz

Professor Hamish Spencer Director Phone | 03 479 7981 Fax | 03 479 7584hamish.spencer@otago.ac.nz

Ms Wendy Newport-Smith Centre ManagerPhone | 021 423 757w.newport-smith@massey.ac.nz

Melanie Pierson Pheno Researcher and WriterPhone | 03 926 6138mjp110@gmail.com

Partner InstitutionsMassey University, Private Bag 11 222, Palmerston North

University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin

Landcare Research NZ Ltd, PO Box 69040, Lincoln

The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland

University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch

Plant and Food Research,120 Mt Albert Road, Sandringham, Auckland 1025

Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington

© Allan Wilson Centre 2014. Pheno is available on request. Please email, awc-lectures@massey.ac.nz. Any information in this newsletter may be reused provided the Allan Wilson Centre is acknowledged as the source of the information.

Ridding New Zealand of rats: the next 50 years

Nearly 200 people attended a symposium organised by Associate Investigator James Russell to celebrate 50 years of rat eradication, including veteran hands-on eradicators like Rowley Taylor, the next generation of professional ecologists, Sir Michael Fay (owner of Great Mercury Island), Professor Dame Anne Salmond (Longbush in Gisborne), and Predator-free NZ Trust representatives, Jessi Morgan and Rebecca Bell.

Who knows what population depths our native birds might have plumbed without the relentless and optimistic efforts of these people. Rats have all but disappeared from Hauraki Gulf Islands, though it requires constant vigilance and the cooperation of tourists, boaties and ferry operators to keep it that way.

A recent development is the interest and investment of private philanthropists and influential individuals such as Dame Anne, Sir Michael, Sir Stephen Tindall, and Dr Gareth Morgan – and the publicity that has come with it. New Zealanders are much more aware of the crisis for our native birds, and the predators causing it. A growing army of volunteers of all ages – from kids at Tolaga Bay Area School to octagenarians in Taupo – are setting and servicing traplines.

Scientists at the Allan Wilson Centre are approaching the problem and possible solutions from a genetics perspective, and with sophisticated modelling of predator-prey dynamics. The scale and practical challenges of the mission require the greatest scientific ingenuity. New Zealand is leading the world in pest eradication, and our scientists are advising on many overseas restoration projects.

What seemed impossible a few decades ago is now being achieved. Ecologists dare to articulate the hope that we might eradicate rodents, possums and mustelids from the mainland. The late Sir Paul Callaghan said predator-free New Zealand could be “our Apollo Mission”. Heartbeating stuff, but Andrea Byrom of Landcare Research ended the Symposium with a very objective and sobering account of our current situation and realistic prospects. The price tag for a predator-free New Zealand: $24billion with current methods and technologies.

Rowley Taylor talks about rodent ecology in NZ since WWII. Photo credit: Katie Flood

The first intentional aerial eradication of rats from

Mokohinau Islands, 1990

Investigator James Russell