Molluscs 2022 Program

The complete program and book of abstracts is available HERE, and please find a timetable below for your convenience.

 

Program – Monday 28th November

17:00-18:00	Welcome Function NOSH Pan Asian – Level 2 of Mantra on View Surfers Paradise

 

Program – Tuesday 29th November

8:45-9:00	Acknowledgement of Country and welcome introduction by Carmel McDougall (Boulevard Room 3)
9:00-9:45	Jan Strugnell Genome evolution and species boundaries of the blue-ringed octopus species complex (Octopodidae: Hapalochlaena)
Symposium: Ecology and Evolution (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Carmel McDougall
9:45-10:05	Carmen Cobo (Virtual) Exploring the biodiversity of Solenogastres (Mollusca, Aplacophora) in the Australasian region
10:05-10:25	Takahiro Asami Could chiral morphs ever mirror each other’s shape?
10:25-11:00	Morning Tea
Symposium: Ecology and Evolution (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Cynthia Riginos
11:00-11:20	Isabel Hyman Speciation and extinction: the endemic land snails of Lord Howe Island
11:20-11:40	Karen Cheney Colour pattern variation and chemical defenses in nudibranch molluscs
11:40-12:00	Sofia Hazel De Guzman (Virtual) Cobweb-like excretions: Advancement in the behaviour of Conus geographus
12:00-12.20	Weili Chan The Chemical Ecology of Nudibranchs Against Predators
12:20-13.30	Lunch
Symposium: Environmental Challenges (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Pauline Ross
13:30-13:50	Andy Davis Dragging the chain: anchor scour impacts from ocean-going vessels on a soft bottom macrobenthic assemblage
13:50-14:10	Frank Koehler As the smoke cleared: Assessing the impacts of 2019-20 megafires on land snails in northern NSW
14:10-14:30	Michelle Hobbs The extreme hydrological drought of 2017-2020 impacts populations of the endemic river mussel, Alathyria jacksoni in the northern Murray-Darling Basin
14:30-14:50	Sue-Ann Watson Ocean acidification alters mollusc behaviour across multiple trophic levels
14:50-15:25	Afternoon Tea
Symposium: Environmental Challenges (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Melanie Bishop
15:25-15:45	Endang Jamal Accumulated pesticides in the Sydney rock oysters: An assessment in the Richmond River estuary, New South Wales, Australia
15:45-16:05	Chamara Benthotage Water quality and the health of leaf oysters (Isognomon ephippium)
16:05-16:15	Mini-break
16:15-17:00	Julia Sigwart (Virtual) Advances in understanding global molluscan biodiversity

 

Program – Wednesday 30th November

8:55-9:00	Announcements by Kirsten Benkendorff (Boulevard Room 3)
9:00-9:45	Melanie Bishop Oyster reef restoration in a changing world
9:45-10:30	Cynthia Riginos Outcomes unknown: Cryptic introductions of invasive Mytilus galloprovincialis and hybridization with native Mytilus planulatus
10:30-10:50	Speed Poster Session Chair: Kirsten Benkendorff
10:50-11:30	Morning Tea
Symposium: Open Symposium (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Frank Koehler		Symposium: Aquaculture and Fisheries (Boulevard Room 1) Chair: Jan Strugnell
11:30-11:50	Nathan Kenny (Virtual) Stretched Mussels: tracing the genetic basis of resilience to climate change and ocean acidification in green-lipped mussels (kuku) from genome to embryo	Kate Seinor Reproductive periodicity of the large Australian turbinid, Turbo militaris
11:50-12:10	Teresa Stephanie Tay Spawning and larval development of two tropical cowries (Gastropoda: Cypraeidae), Cypraea tigris and Mauritia arabica under laboratory conditions	Jade Fredericks (Virtual) Targeted spatial sampling of an aggregated sandy shore mollusc using indigenous ecological knowledge
12:10-12:30	Lorelle Stanisic Sharing the Snail Story	Brett Bolte Exploiting oysters as natural samplers for pathogen detection within aquaculture
12:30-12:50	Kehinde Ademolu (Virtual) Temporal variations in the chemical composition of giant African land snail (Archachatina marginata) shell	Nikolina Nenadic Assembling and analysing the transcriptome of an elusive Rhizarian parasite, Marteilia sydneyi
12:50-14:00	Lunch
	Symposium: Open Symposium (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Karen Cheney	Symposium: Aquaculture and Fisheries (Boulevard Room 1) Chair: Carmel McDougall
14:00-14:20	Sadar Aslam (Virtual) The first record of pearl oysters from the genus Pinctada (Röding, 1798) and Pteria (Scopoli, 1777) from Churna Island, Karachi, Pakistan	Hayley Parfitt Saving the molluscs of Moreton Bay. A Fisheries Officer’s perspective
14:20-14:40	Joseph Egbebi (Virtual) Biochemical composition of eggshell and egg yolk of giant African land snail (Archachatina marginata) during gestation period	Shauna Murray (virtual) Coupling novel molecular tools with real-time sensors to model water quality, growth and disease and improve profitability in Australian shellfish aquaculture
14:40-15:00	Abdulhammed Oropo (Virtual) Biochemical prospects of mucin of giant African land Snails (Achachatina marginata and Achatina achatina)	Scott Cummins A review of the Giant Triton (Charonia tritonis), from endangered species to coral reef saviour?
15:00-15:45	Afternoon Tea
17:45	Conference Dinner Sea World Sea Jellies Tour Dinner speaker – Prof Kylie Pitt

 

Program – Thursday 1st December

8:55-9: 00	Announcements by Matt Nimbs (Boulevard Room 3)
9: 00-9:45	Suzanne Williams Exploring Colour and Vision in Snails
9: 45-10:30	Kara Layton Uncovering the mechanisms driving colour pattern variation in nudibranchs
10:30-11:00	Morning Tea
Symposium: Ecology, Conservation and Management (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Kirsten Benkendorff		Symposium: Freshwater Molluscs (Boulevard Room 1) Chair: Michael Klunzinger
11:00-11:20	Dayanitha Damodaran Habitats for Mussel-anity	Alan Lymbery Can anthropogenic refuges support populations of a threatened freshwater mussel in a drying climate?
11:20-11:40	Christopher Klaas Leaf oyster reefs provide key fish habitat in subtropical estuaries	Elka Blackman Desiccation tolerance of river and floodplain mussels in Australia’s Murray- Darling Basin
11:40-12:00	Marina Richardson Some like it hot: The ecology, ecosystem benefits and restoration potential of oyster reefs in tropical waters	Michael Klunzinger Freshwater Mussel Conservation in Australia – Problems and Prospects
12:00-12.20	Hannah Bacho (Virtual) The use of the Earth’s ecozone as basis for biogeographic distribution of the Teredinidae family	Kinsley Meg Perez Comparison of Molluscs Diversity Patterns between the Twin Lakes, Pandin and Yambo, San Pablo City, Laguna, Philippines
12:20-13.50	Lunch MSA AGM (from 12:50pm – Breakout room)
Symposium: Ecology, Conservation and Management (Boulevard Room 3) Chair: Michelle Hobbs
13:50-14:10	Charlotte Jenkins The NSW Oyster Reef Restoration project – delivering integrated solutions to restoring a lost ecosystem
14:10-14:30	Mei Lin Neo Assessing taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of giant clams across the Indo-Pacific for conservation prioritisation
14:30-14:50	Arial Joy Roderos (Virtual) Taxonomic survey of siphonaria in Verde Island, Batangas Philippines
14: 50-15:20	Afternoon Tea and Prize Judging
15:20-15:30	Closing Session Student prizes and concluding address by Carmel McDougall (Boulevard Room 3)

 

POSTERS

 

PO1

Michael Klunzinger:
Australian Freshwater Molluscs – A forthcoming book on their Biology, Ecology, Diversity and Conservation

PO2

Carmel McDougall:
Unexpected diversity of oyster species in Queensland

PO3

Matt Nimbs:
The taming of Smeagol? A new population, and an assessment of the known population, of the critically endangered pulmonate gastropod Smeagol hilaris (Heterobranchia, Otinidae)

PO4

Michelle Hobbs:
Ecology of freshwater mussels (Unionoida): a global quantitative review using topic modelling

PO5

Ya Zhang:
Characterization of the molecular mechanisms of sexual maturation in the greenlip abalone, Haliotis laevigata

PO6

Lorelle Stanisic:
Unravelling Figuladra: Integrating morphology and mitochondrial DNA for species delimitation in the hadroid land snail Figuladra (Eupulmonata: Camaenidae)

PO7

Mollie Stefanek:
The detection of self/non-self in pearl oysters

PO8

Claire Moad:
Are nudibranch colour patterns honest? An investigation with two groups (Chromodoris spp. and Phyllididae) using Quantitative Colour Pattern Analysis (QCPA)

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

 Associate Professor Melanie Bishop (Macquarie University)

Professor Bishop is a coastal ecologist with over 15 years of experience researching temperate ecosystems of Australia and the USA. She leads a team at Macquarie University that is uncovering how coastal ecosystems operate and respond to change. Her research has a particular focus on the innovation and evaluation of environmental solutions that create habitat and conserve native biodiversity in degraded seascapes. She co-leads the green engineering working group of the World Harbour Project and the Living Seawalls Program. The impact A/Prof Bishop’s work on environmental management has been recognised with a NSW Scientist of the Year Award, and the Brian Robinson Fellowship from the Banksia Environmental Foundation.

 

Professor Cynthia Riginos (The University of Queensland)

Professor Cynthia Riginos is an evolutionary geneticist with wide-ranging interests spanning biogeography, phylogeography, molecular ecology, population genomics, speciation, hybridization, invasive species, and conservation. Overall, her research seeks to understand how marine biodiversity is created, where that biodiversity has accumulated, and how this knowledge can be used preserve biodiversity and the processes that create it in a changing world. She is especially fond of molluscs, reef fishes, and corals but easily distracted by other taxa as well. Cynthia has been at UQ since 2006 and previously held an endowed postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Evolution & Comparative Genomics at Duke University.

 

Dr Kara Layton (University of Aberdeen)

Dr Kara Layton is a marine molecular biologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland interested in patterns of diversity in our oceans and how ecological and evolutionary processes shape these patterns. Kara is especially interested in the ecology and evolution of warning colouration and mimicry in nudibranchs, and in the genomic basis of adaptation more broadly. Kara is very passionate about improving genomic resources for molluscs, serving as co-lead of the Molluscan Genomics Interest Group, and in continuing efforts to document global biodiversity. Prior to this, Kara held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ocean Frontier Institute and Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia.

 

Professor Jan Strugnell (James Cook University)

Professor Jan Strugnell completed her BSc (Hons) at James Cook University before obtaining her DPhil at Oxford University, UK, funded by a Rhodes Scholarship. During her DPhil she used molecular and fossil evidence to investigate phylogenetic relationships and divergence times within cephalopods (octopus, squids, and cuttlefish). Professor Strugnell then worked as a post doctoral research fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast, the British Antarctic Survey, and Cambridge University UK, where she investigated evolutionary relationships within and between Antarctic and deep-sea octopods. She reported the first dated molecular evidence that deep-sea fauna from other ocean basins originated from Southern Ocean taxa. Professor Strugnell is currently Director of the Centre of Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture at James Cook University where she investigates the evolution and function of marine organisms using genomic and proteomic techniques. Her research encompasses both applied and blue skies questions and includes investigation of population differentiation, adaptation, resilience and susceptibility to temperature stress, range shifts and method development for detecting rare and invasive species. She also continues to investigate population and species level molecular evolution in Antarctic and deep-sea taxa in the context of past climatic and geological change.

 

 Dr Suzanne Williams (Natural History Museum, London)

Dr Suzanne Williams is a Principal Research Scientist at the Natural History Museum in London. Her research attempts to identify some of the mechanisms that generate diversity in species-rich biomes and the factors that contribute to phenotypic diversity. She is interested in key innovations that may affect species survival, with a particular focus on colour and vision.  The fabulous and diverse colours and patterns of molluscan shells and brightly coloured echinoderms, and the myriad of different eye morphologies in Mollusca make both these groups excellent models for studies on the evolution of colour, the genetic control of pigmentation, and the evolution and loss of vision.

Williams has worked at the Natural History Museum since 2001. During that time, she was Head of the Invertebrate Division for five years and President of the Malacological Society of London for three. Prior to joining the Museum, she was employed at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama where she studied snapping shrimp, and before that she worked at the Australian Institute of Marine Science working on population genetics of giant clams.

 

 Professor Julia Sigwart (Senckenberg Research Institute and Museum, Frankfurt, Germany)

Understanding the diversity of animal body plans is one of the grand challenges of evolutionary biology. Among animal phyla, Mollusca represents the greatest morphological disparity, with adult forms varying from tiny bivalves less than 1 mm, to 18 m giant squid. Even within the eight distinct living classes of molluscs there are numerous examples of exceptional morphological novelties– snails with iron-infused scales, headless chitons with image-forming eyes embedded in their dorsal shells, bivalves that crawl and live in trees, and many more– pointing to an enduring evolutionary plasticity of shell and body form. In recent years, work on molluscan genomics has repeatedly demonstrated that molluscan diversity is a fundamental character of the phylum, and this presents challenges the available technology. Sampling efforts have often focussed on filling the large gaps, such as the elusive monoplacophorans. But much is to be gained from denser sampling efforts that build comparisons between canonical body forms and extreme morphological adaptations within clades. Molecular data have also often revealed cryptic species and higher than expected species richness within morphologically similar clades. Any further analysis of biological patterns depends on understanding species identity. So understanding these grand questions also prompt an increasing need for tools that allow us to describe and name species as efficiently as possible, with descriptions that are actually useful for diagnosis. In Senckenberg, we are trialling new approaches to taxonomic workflows that will support biodiversity research and a holistic understanding of molluscan and marine invertebrate diversity. Exploring this grand diversity of marine molluscs requires a coordinated global sampling that is inclusive to all body plans, niches, and clades, and all malacologists.