Finishing off Session 1a of #CEEC24 is Jessica Peers with her talk: Novel gene pseudogenization in a species with long-term low Ne, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus).

Using a transfer experiment Liliana and colleagues compared workers from young colonies to those from old colonies. This gave them the chance to decipher the individual and social influences on ageing in bees a little further. #CEEC24

It seems you live longer if you’re born in a young bumblebee colony. Liliana's study is trying to find out whether this is due to intrinsic differences in quality or is it the social environment that influences this. #CEEC24

Ageing is a puzzling field in biology and so are the social systems of eusocial insects. Bumblebees are great to study this, as workers within the same colony show a large variety in longevity and it is not yet understood what determines an individual’s lifespan. #CEEC24

Next up is Liliana Fischer with her talk: Individual vs. Social Influences - What determines longevity in social insects?

Relative to conspecifics, Praslin sooglossids also have divergent nuclear genotypes and call characters, a finding consistent with adaptation causing speciation in a novel thermal environment. Here's the paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...#CEEC24

They also found that frogs on Praslin are larger in size. This combined with ancestral state estimations suggest that this population shifted its thermal niche in response to restricted opportunities for elevational dispersal. #CEEC24

Recent work on this species by Jim and colleagues on several Seychelles islands used bioacoustics to show that frogs on Praslin are active at warmer temperatures and therefore adapted to the hotter conditions on this island. #CEEC24

Jim takes us through some frog species endemic to the Seychelles, including this incredible Seychelles frog (Sooglossus sechellensis), sadly threatened with extinction. They reach a maximum size of just 15 mm and the females carry their young around on their backs. #CEEC24

#CEEC24 starts off with our first plenary talk from Jim Labisko: Right place, right time, and a little bit of luck: an unorthodox route into academia and working with tropical amphibians.