BIO Annual Conference

Dear staff at Department of Biology,

Building on the success of previous years, we are pleased to invite you to our Annual Conference where we celebrate research,
stimulate scientific discussions among groups and explore the innovative research activities within our department once again.

We invite PhD students, Postdocs, Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, and Professors to present their ongoing research.

Additionally, we welcome all other employees, including technical and administrative staff, to attend and enjoy the day.

Participation from all academic staff is expected.

There are two ways to present your research:

• 15 min talk (12 min + 3 min questions). Each section chooses 3 speakers beforehand.
• 2 min talk (2 min madness session). Max 30 talks (first come, first served).

Presentations must be in English.

We encourage Postdocs and Assistant professors to chair the 15 min talk sessions (in pairs of two).

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Registration

Everyone must register – also speakers.

Registration (free) no later than 3 June 2025: https://events.au.dk/bioconference2025

If you are giving a talk (15 min or 2 min) please have a tentative title of your talk ready.

[When you fill out registration template, click “Continue”, - not “Add more”.]

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Department of Biology Annual Conference 2025
Date: June 18th 2025 Venue: Auditorium F, building 1534-125

• 08.15-08.45 COFFEE/TEA AND BREAD ROLLS (1534-125 Auditorium F)
• 08.45-08.55 WELCOME by Angela Fago, Biology Research and Business Committee

08.55-10.10 TALK SESSION, chaired by Jéssica Lira Viana & Aja N.B. Tengstedt

o Anton Gligorescu, PhD Student: Advancing Insect Production: From Research Frontiers to Real-World Applications
o Tina Santl-Temkiv, Associate Professor: Agricultural soils as sources of cloud-forming ice-nucleating particles produced by microorganisms
o Ninad Avinash Mungi, Assistant Professor: Recovery and relevance of megafauna in the Anthropocene
o Johannes Overgaard, Professor: A uniform cold stress syndome of insects
o Paraskevi Manolaki, Postdoc: Climate mitigation potential of peatland rewetting in Denmark

10.10-10.30 2 MIN MADNESS SESSION

o Kalle Ruokolainen, Teaching Associate Professor: Will bamboo dominate Amazonia under hotter and drier climate?
o Jéssica Lira Viana, Postdoc: Unveiling Hidden Differences: Spectral Signatures of Amazonian Fern Species
o Aja Tengstedt, Postdoc: Turning Genome Data into Real-World Conservation Action
o Emil Thomassen, Postdoc: Resource-richness relationships for dung-associated arthropods
o Yuan-Zhen Liu, Postdoc: Recent demographic history inferred from allele frequency spectra
o Jasper Carlsen, Postdoc: Unraveling the Role of CO2 as a Metabolic Signaling Molecule
o Pernille Tønnesen, Postdoc: Sperm whale foraging
o Christian Damsgaard, Assistant Professor: Neural metabolism in hibernating ground squirrels
o Stina Kolodzey, Postdoc: Are big mamas better mamas?

10.30-10.50 COFFEE BREAK

10.55-11.40 INVITED SPEAKER LECTURE

o Intro invited speaker by Peter Grønkjær

o Professor Toke Thomas Høye, Ecoscience, Aarhus University

Automated species monitoring from the Arctic to the tropics
With computer vision and deep learning, camera systems have become important tools to improve our understanding of species responses to environmental change. Through computer eyes, it is potentially possible to effectively, continuously, and non-invasively observe insects and other animals throughout diurnal and seasonal cycles and deep learning models can provide estimates of their abundance, biomass, and diversity. Similarly, plants can be followed locally through the flowering cycle or as they expand or contract their ranges across generations.
I will unpack and visualize the rich and multidimensional data, which novel camera-based monitoring systems are capable of automatically generating. Through results from national and continental scale programs deploying sensors, I will provide a glimpse into the insights that can be derived from the images and what the future of automated species monitoring might look like. I will also highlight some of the outstanding challenges and future research avenues to facilitate the broad scale implementation of camera-based monitoring for plants and insects across scales.

11.40-12.45 LUNCH (Math canteen)

12.45-14.00 TALK SESSION, chaired by Markéta Linhartová & Fabian Daniel Schneider

o Jonathan Christensen, PhD Student: Spatial variation in field-metabolic rate of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) at its northern limit
o Amanda Marie Bundgaard, Assistant Professor: Co-option of liver glycogen metabolism in naked mole-rat heart
o Venni Keskiniva, Postdoc: Start by Getting the Species Right: Lessons from Neotropical Ferns
o Arya Van Alin, Postdoc: BE-SALT Project, how microorganisms respond to salinity oscillation
o Trine Bilde, Professor: The genomic consequences of land use change for arthropod populations

14.00-14.20 2 MIN MADNESS SESSION

o Ciska Bakkeren, PhD Student: Multilevel Physiological Analysis of a Myoglobin Knockout Zebrafish
o Cristina Marcolin, PhD Student: Is the high occurrence of loud, broadband, super-cavitation transients from ship propellers a problem for toothed whales?
o Kristian Beedholm, Research Programmer: Getting rid of the bias in signal parameter measures
o Ramya Veerubhotla, Postdoc: The Bioelectric Bond: Microbial Teamwork at the Heart of Biohybrids
o Lasse Z. Jensen, Postdoc: Seasonal Dynamics of Bioaerosols and Ice Nucleating Particles in the High Arctic Atmosphere
o Markéta Linhartová, Postdoc: New type of ferritin - half-size molecule coming from cable bacteria
o Jens-Christian Svenning, Professor: Temperate forest plants are associated with heterogenous semi-open canopy conditions shaped by large herbivores
o Alisson Fierro-Minda, PhD Student: Plant-Soil correlation at different spatial resolutions
o Charlotte Gautier, Postdoc: Reading lifetime hormone profiles from fish bones

14.20-14.35 COFFEE BREAK

14.35-15.50 TALK SESSION, chaired by Kimia Zarean Mousaabadi & Stina Kolodzey

o Antii Miettinen, Postdoc: Bottlenecked but booming: the genomic landscape of a paradoxically successful invader
o Kartik Aiyer, Postdoc: Microbial Tales of Electrons and Mud
o Eva Moracho Martinez, Postdoc: The restoration of ecological interactions
o Katja Bundgaard Last, PhD Student: Feeding frequency does not affect growth efficiency in Burmese pythons
o Søren Rysgaard, Professor: New research center investigates the consequences of melting ice and more freshwater in the Arctic

15.50-16.10 2 MIN MADNESS SESSION

o Xiyan Zhang, PhD Student: Metabolic Mysteries: How Deep-Sea Archaea Eat Ethane and Butane Without Oxygen
o Kimia Zarean, Postdoc: Cable Bacteria-Inspired Hemin–Nickel Coordination Polymers for Oxygen Evolution Reaction
o Ian Marshall, Associate Professor: Aerobic methanotrophic bacteria in anoxic places
o Eva Egelyng Sigsgaard, Assistant Profesor: Dark Indicators - Part Two
o Silas Tanderup, PhD Student: Breed chioce for rewidling, the genomics perspective
o Wanben Wu, Postdoc: Global Ecosystem Responses to Rural Depopulation and Land Use De-intensification
o Jeppe Aagaard Kristensen, Assistant Professor: Bison and prairie dogs shape prairie biogeochemistry
o Uriel Gélin, Postdoc: Zoogeochemistry: It's an elemental thing
o Laura Kragh Frederiksen, PhD Student: Biogeographical connections across tropical America through time

16.10-16.15 CLOSING REMARKS by Angela Fago, Biology Research and Business Committee