LATEST: TALKS TODAY!

1 Sep (Fri) "The Surprises of Marine Life in Singapore and the threat of Marine Trash" a talk by N. Sivasothi

A lunch time talk conducted in conjunction with NUS' participation at the 15th International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) on Saturday 9th September 2006. By N. Sivasothi a.k.a. Otterman Coordinator, International Coastal Cleanup Singapore; Research Officer/Instructor, Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, NUS

The Singapore coastline is still survived by interesting patches of coastal and marine ecosystems, which are home to otters, dugongs, sea stars, octopus, dolphins, hundreds of species of fish, sea snakes, turtles and even crocodiles! Creatures new to science are still being discovered today.

Marine life faces several challenges - development, marine trash, poaching and environmehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifntal accidents. In this focus on marine trash, plastic is a particular curse and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said "Marine trash, mainly plastic, is killing more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals and sea turtles each year".

How can we change this picture? Find out during the talk.

More about the talk on the RMBR news blog

Time: 12pm - 1pm
Venue: LT31, Science Drive 1, Faculty of Science, National
University of Singapore
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1 Sep (Fri): "How do we measure success in conservation and how do
we follow migratory dragonflies?" Two unrelated by intriguing issues
in conservation biology

David S. Wilcove Professor of Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and
Public Affairs , Woodrow Wilson School Princeton University.

The first half of my talk focuses on the importance of developing
biologically sound measures to assess the effectiveness of
conservation actions. I present a new way to measure the
effectiveness of land acquisition in protecting endangered species,
and I apply it to a globally significant ecosystem in central
Florida. In the second half, I discuss a new study of migrating
dragonflies in southern New Jersey, USA. Although billions of
dragonflies migrate along the East Coast of the USA every fall,
virtually nothing is known about their migratory behavior. We
attached tiny transmitters to migrating dragonflies and followed the
insects over several days to learn more about this phenomenon.

More details on the seminar poster

Time: 4 pm
Venue: LT 20, Dept of Biological Sciences, National University of
Singapore