ESEB under-represented ECR achievement award

I am a mam­ma­lo­gist, spe­cial­ized in sig­modontines, a lin­eage of cricet­id rodents nat­ive to South Amer­ica. My research has focused on ana­lyz­ing the rela­tion­ship between cranio­mandibu­lar mor­pho­logy and diet, and how these factors inter­play with envir­on­ment­al vari­ables in assemblage struc­tur­ing and spe­cies com­pos­i­tion changes over time. I am cur­rently work­ing on recent extinc­tions of small mam­mals from the south­ern hemisphere.

I obtained my PhD in Bio­lo­gic­al Sci­ences at the Fac­ulty of Exact and Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, Uni­ver­sid­ad de Buenos Aires, with a research pro­ject car­ried out at the Museo Argen­tino de Cien­cias Nat­urales “Bern­ardino Riva­da­via”, and a grant from the Argen­tine Nation­al Coun­cil on Sci­entif­ic and Tech­nic­al Research (CONICET). My pro­ject had the aim of mak­ing an eco­mor­pho­lo­gic­al char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of five sig­modontine assemblages, com­pris­ing 22 spe­cies from cent­ral-east­ern Argen­tina. It involved tak­ing cranio­mandibu­lar meas­ure­ments on over 900 spe­ci­mens, and per­form­ing a meta-ana­lys­is of all the avail­able diet­ary data. I assessed the rela­tion­ship between cranio­mandibu­lar mor­pho­logy and diet, find­ing par­tic­u­lar cranio­mandibu­lar traits linked to dif­fer­ent diet­ary strategies, and vari­ations in this rela­tion­ship between assemblages. I then incor­por­ated envir­on­ment­al vari­ables into my ana­lyses, and stud­ied how they influ­enced niche struc­tur­ing at dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions. Addi­tion­ally, I invest­ig­ated the com­pos­i­tion changes in an assemblage between the late Holo­cene and the present time, which revealed that some com­bin­a­tions of cranio­mandibu­lar mor­pho­logy and diet strategies seemed to be related to loc­al extinctions.

I am cur­rently work­ing on a postdoc at the Labor­at­ory of Integ­rat­ive Bio­logy of Evol­u­tion­ary Sys­tems, Fac­ulty of Exact and Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, Uni­ver­sid­ad de Buenos Aires. I am study­ing recent extinc­tions of small mam­mals from the south­ern hemi­sphere, with the aim of identi­fy­ing trends that could link extinc­tion vul­ner­ab­il­ity to bio­lo­gic­al vari­ables of the species.

Mid­way through my PhD, I began exper­i­en­cing an array of dis­abling symp­toms, includ­ing severe joint pain, con­stant head­aches, blurry vis­ion, chron­ic abdom­in­al pain, and over­all exhaus­tion. This, in turn, sig­ni­fic­antly impacted my cog­nit­ive abil­it­ies, dif­fi­cult­ing my work. My research became inter­twined with count­less med­ic­al appoint­ments that were unable to provide any answers. In spite of being undia­gnosed, untreated and con­stantly declin­ing in health through­out the last years of my doc­tor­ate, I was able to ful­fill all my object­ives and fin­ish my thesis.

Dur­ing my first year of postdoc I was dia­gnosed with three dis­abling chron­ic health con­di­tions: hyper­mobile Ehlers-Dan­los syn­drome, dys­auto­nomia (POTS) and stage IV endo­met­ri­os­is. After under­go­ing a major sur­gery, start­ing phar­ma­co­lo­gic­al treat­ments and phys­ic­al rehab­il­it­a­tion pro­grams, I am slowly get­ting bet­ter and regain­ing phys­ic­al and cog­nit­ive abil­it­ies. Nev­er­the­less, I am now facing a new dif­fi­culty, as my coun­try is enter­ing a state of deep eco­nom­ic and polit­ic­al crisis that is threat­en­ing the con­tinu­ation of the nation­al research insti­tute (CONICET), where most of Argentina’s sci­ent­ists work. I am proud to have remained com­mit­ted to research through sev­er­al years with undia­gnosed chron­ic health con­di­tions, and to have been recog­nized with the ESEB under-rep­res­en­ted early-career research­er achieve­ment award. I am determ­ined to keep doing my best to face adversity and con­trib­ute to the advance­ment of know­ledge in my field of study.

I am honored to be recog­nized as a recip­i­ent of the 2024 ESEB Under-rep­res­en­ted ECR Achieve­ment Award, a test­a­ment to my jour­ney in plant evol­u­tion­ary eco­logy marked by resi­li­ence and determ­in­a­tion observed also in the very plants I study.

From the lush gar­dens of my grand­mother­’s home in India to nav­ig­at­ing aca­demi­a’s uncharted ter­rit­or­ies, my path has been one of over­com­ing adversity and hon­ing resi­li­ence. Amidst the chal­lenges of isol­a­tion and dis­crim­in­a­tion dur­ing my Ph.D. stud­ies abroad, my research on plant com­mu­nic­a­tion provided solace and pur­pose. This jour­ney inspired the cre­ation of Pak­sh, a men­tal health sup­port net­work, and fueled my advocacy for sys­tem­ic change with­in the sci­entif­ic community.

Cur­rently, my focus lies in decod­ing the intric­ate chem­ic­al con­ver­sa­tions of plants to pion­eer sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al solu­tions. As Chair of the sci­ence policy work­ing group at the Mar­ie Curie Alumni Asso­ci­ation and advisor for Open Research Europe, I am also ded­ic­ated to fos­ter­ing inclus­iv­ity and equity in aca­demia. My story stems from a relent­less com­mit­ment to leav­ing a last­ing impact in the sci­entif­ic realm, under­stand­ing the amaz­ing world of plants, and advoc­at­ing for what we can learn from them. I am grate­ful for this recog­ni­tion and excited to con­tin­ue my jour­ney of dis­cov­ery and advocacy.

Improved pro­ductiv­ity in farmed fish involves a long pro­cess of domest­ic­a­tion, pro­du­cing a phen­o­type very dif­fer­ent from the wild-type phen­o­type. While many of these changes may arise due to inten­tion­al selec­tion of traits bene­fi­cial for cap­tive rear­ing, such selec­tion can also have neg­at­ive con­sequences due to trade-offs with oth­er cor­rel­ated traits that may be unin­ten­tion­ally selec­ted sim­ul­tan­eously but have a neg­at­ive influ­ence on pro­ductiv­ity. For example, aggress­ive beha­viour has a neg­at­ive influ­ence on pro­ductiv­ity but may be unin­ten­tion­ally co-selec­ted. A second trade-off example is fast growth (pos­it­ive for aquacul­ture) and early sexu­al mat­ur­a­tion (neg­at­ive for aquacul­ture as growth and flesh qual­ity decrease). The pos­it­ive cor­rel­a­tion between these two traits is gen­er­ally advant­age­ous in wild pop­u­la­tions but should optim­ally be de-coupled for improved aquacul­ture pro­ductiv­ity. How­ever, detailed stud­ies sim­ul­tan­eously link­ing the propensity of sexu­al mat­ur­a­tion with beha­viours such as aggres­sion, and the pos­sible com­mon genet­ic basis of these aquacul­tur­ally import­ant phen­o­types is yet to be con­duc­ted. This is now pos­sible thanks to recent work of Craig Primmer’s EVOLUTION, CONSERVATION, AND GENOMICS research group, Uni­ver­sity of Hel­sinki for char­ac­ter­ising the rel­at­ively simple genet­ic basis of age at matur­ity in Atlantic sal­mon, thus allow­ing use of genet­ic pre­dic­tion to char­ac­ter­ise the likely age of later sexu­al mat­ur­a­tion already at the juven­ile stage (based on the gen­o­type of the vgll3 and six6 genes).

I am a 3^rd year PhD can­did­ate in the Inter­dis­cip­lin­ary Envir­on­ment­al Sci­ence doc­tor­al pro­gramme, Uni­ver­sity of Hel­sinki. My research is invest­ig­at­ing how the age of sexu­al mat­ur­a­tion is related to oth­er import­ant char­ac­ter­ist­ics of fish, from both evol­u­tion­ary and aquacul­tur­al per­spect­ives. There­fore, the object­ive of my PhD pro­ject is to use sal­mon as a mod­el to elu­cid­ate the rela­tion­ship between beha­viour at the juven­ile stage, and sexu­al mat­ur­a­tion later in life, which is poorly under­stood, but crit­ic­al inform­a­tion crit­ic­al for the aquacul­ture industry and hence pro­motes sus­tain­able aquacul­ture and food secur­ity. I am from a food insec­ure coun­try (Sierra Leone) and fish remains the main source of anim­al pro­tein (85%) but depends largely on wild caught fish to sat­is­fy this need, res­ult­ing in over­fish­ing. The motiv­a­tion for my PhD is to gain know­ledge in this sec­tor and help the region in alle­vi­at­ing hun­ger and mal­nu­tri­tion while pro­tect­ing the envir­on­ment and its resources. How­ever, get­ting to this point has been a dif­fi­cult jour­ney. Grow­ing up in rur­al Sierra Leone, achiev­ing an edu­ca­tion was fraught with chal­lenges. I atten­ded school bare­footed and without meal for the first six years of school­ing as this was a lux­ury I couldn’t afford. Dur­ing the civil war in Sierra Leone, I was taken cap­tive by the rebels deep into the north­ern jungle where I was trained as a child com­batant. I fought along­side the rebels for about a year before escap­ing to Free­town. To go back to school, I begged on the streets of Free­town and did dif­fer­ent types of odd jobs to raise my school fees. Des­pite all, I per­severed, and I am hon­oured to now be recog­nized by the ESEB Under-rep­res­en­ted ECR award.

Ms. Zabibu Kaba­lika is a young con­ser­va­tion bio­lo­gist from Tan­zania, East Africa. Her research interests lie in the areas of con­ser­va­tion of migrat­ory anim­als, human-wild­life inter­ac­tions and the resi­li­ence of eco­lo­gic­al pro­cesses to long-term changes. She is cur­rently in the final stages of her PhD stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow, focus­ing on the applic­a­tion of iso­top­ic meth­ods to under­stand move­ment pat­terns and niche dif­fer­en­ti­ation between migrat­ory ungu­lates across the Ser­en­geti-Mara eco­sys­tem in Tanzania.

Zabibu gradu­ated from Sokoine Uni­ver­sity of Agri­cul­ture (SUA) in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in Wild­life Man­age­ment. In 2016 she was awar­ded the highly com­pet­it­ive Karimjee Jivan­jee Con­ser­va­tion Schol­ar­ship (2016–2018) to attend the inter­na­tion­al MSc pro­gram in Con­ser­va­tion Man­age­ment of Afric­an Eco­sys­tems (CMAE) at the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow. Dur­ing her MSc, she developed a nov­el approach for geo­locat­ing migrat­ory anim­als across the great­er Ser­en­geti eco­sys­tem using sul­phur iso­topes in tail hairs, which is pub­lished in the journ­al Move­ment Eco­logy (https://doi.org/10.1186/s40462-020–00222‑w).

In 2019 Zabibu was awar­ded the United Kingdom’s pres­ti­gi­ous Com­mon­wealth PhD Schol­ar­ship (with an addi­tion­al £35,000 research grant, which is rarely offered) to con­tin­ue her gradu­ate stud­ies in evol­u­tion­ary eco­logy at the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow. Her research invest­ig­ates the use of iso­top­ic meth­ods to under­stand the evol­u­tion of niche dif­fer­en­ti­ation and altern­at­ive life his­tory strategies. For example, Zabibu has developed forensic tech­niques to dif­fer­en­ti­ate res­id­ent versus migrant life his­tory strategies using the iso­top­ic sig­na­tures found in con­tinu­ously grow­ing tail hair from both live and dead anim­als. Her research has also demon­strated peri­ods of diet­ary over­lap in spe­cies that migrate togeth­er to under­stand how com­pet­i­tion for food may have struc­tured these ungu­late com­munit­ies and their sea­son­al movements.

As an early career research­er, Zabibu is eager to build her research career in wild­life con­ser­va­tion and she is inter­ested to explore the evol­u­tion of life his­tor­ies of migrat­ory pop­u­la­tions more gen­er­ally. She is cur­rently seek­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to fur­ther her know­ledge, skills and exper­i­ence in wild­life con­ser­va­tion research as well as oppor­tun­it­ies to form inter­na­tion­al col­lab­or­a­tions. Zabibu’s ulti­mate goal is to build her research career in her home coun­try, Tanzania.

Poly­ploid­iz­a­tion is det­ri­ment­al to the indi­vidu­al because of prob­lems of ster­il­ity, gigant­ism, and gene expres­sion. And yet, poly­ploidy is now recog­nized as a major evol­u­tion­ary driver in the ances­try of most Euk­a­ryota, asso­ci­ated with gene net­work diver­si­fic­a­tion, mass spe­ci­ation, and high­er adapt­ab­il­ity. How ini­tial dis­ad­vant­age and down­stream advant­age are bridged has been dif­fi­cult to study in anim­als because of invi­ab­il­ity. In my PhD with Leo W. Beuk­e­boom of the Uni­ver­sity of Gronin­gen, I exploited mul­tiple path­ways of her­it­able poly­ploid­iz­a­tion in the para­sit­oid wasp Naso­nia vit­ri­pen­nis to devel­op it into an anim­al poly­ploid mod­el. I am honored to now be recog­nized by the ESEB Under-rep­res­en­ted ECR award. I come from Chica­go gang ter­rit­ory and a low-income fam­ily. I went through a divorce halfway through my PhD. In the final stages, I became unex­pec­tedly preg­nant with twins with someone who aban­doned them before they were born. But I was able to pub­lish papers, write suc­cess­ful grants, and defend my PhD through­out. I am now rais­ing my beau­ti­ful chil­dren as a single moth­er and am a postdoc at the Uni­ver­sity of Gronin­gen, con­tinu­ing my work in poly­ploid evol­u­tion as well as bio­lo­gic­al con­trol and host spe­cificity. I thank my child­hood teach­ers, fam­ily and friends, child­care pro­viders, col­leagues, and advisors for help­ing me prove that com­munity is what keeps determ­ined women in the sci­ences. I hope to live up to being a recip­i­ent of this award by increas­ing the vis­ib­il­ity of and cre­at­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for stu­dents and sci­ent­ists from dis­ad­vant­aged backgrounds.

The gastrointest­in­al tracks of the anim­als are home to diverse and dynam­ic micro­bi­al com­munit­ies, col­lect­ively known as gut micro­bi­ota. The dis­cov­er­ies in the last two dec­ades have left no doubt that gut micro­bi­ota has mutu­al con­nec­tions with sev­er­al aspects of host physiology, fun­da­ment­ally alter­ing our under­stand­ing of anim­al bio­logy. Today it is well-estab­lished that micro­bi­al sym­bionts are func­tion­ally involved in count­less pro­cesses and adapt­a­tions of their hosts. Nev­er­the­less, we still lack a prop­er under­stand­ing of the factors shap­ing the gut micro­bi­ota, par­tic­u­larly in birds. I am a postdoc­tor­al research­er in the group of Prof. Bar­bara Caspers at Biele­feld Uni­ver­sity, the Depart­ment of Beha­vi­our­al Eco­logy, which has become a refuge to me since 2016. I received a postdoc­tor­al fel­low­ship from the Phil­ipp Schwartz Ini­ti­at­ive of the Alex­an­der von Hum­boldt Found­a­tion, which enabled me to study fas­cin­at­ing inter­ac­tions between anim­als and their micro­bi­al sym­bionts. In a broad sense, I aim to under­stand the causes and con­sequences of indi­vidu­al-spe­cif­ic micro­bi­o­mes. In par­tic­u­lar, I stud­ied the rel­at­ive impacts of host selec­tion and social trans­mis­sion on gut micro­bi­ota across dif­fer­ent devel­op­ment­al stages in zebra finches. Fur­ther­more, in a col­lab­or­at­ive pro­ject with Marta Szulkin from the  Uni­ver­sity of Warsaw,  I also invest­ig­ated the impact of urb­an­isa­tion on the gut micro­bi­ota of great tits. My research demon­strated that host-spe­cif­ic factors and envir­on­ment­al modi­fic­a­tions col­lect­ively shape anim­al-asso­ci­ated micro­bi­al com­munit­ies lead­ing to tre­mend­ous indi­vidu­al vari­ations. As a next step, I aim to under­stand how indi­vidu­al vari­ation in micro­bi­al com­munit­ies trans­lates into cog­nit­ive and beha­vi­our­al differences.