 Good afternoon everyone so welcome to our cert the provost lecture series and again I would like to every time I would like to thank Everyone who made it possible for our provost lecture series and and Scotty. I I found the picture On on Google. I thought that was pretty cool and everybody else is the formal picture So again, let me highlight people from the provost office and also people from the CPR and also many stakeholders to approve the provost lecture series and so today's lecture will be given by professor Tom bogey young who was recently promoted to associate Professor with tenure and so so this frame picture frame will be given to Tom after his lecture and Very briefly. So since I'm Tom's mentor, so I think it's only fitting so I will introduce Tom for my time for eight minutes before Tom takes over and so Tom joined moist about six years ago Yeah, something like that and so he leads the evolution Evolutionary genomics unit so you can see from from this picture Little creatures that Tom is very passionate about and So when I was assigned as Tom's mentor I still remember he came to my office and our research field is very different I said so I mean the area of engineering microfluidics, but Tom works on Cockroaches, so first I try to clarify do you Is termite the same as cockroaches? I still remember and he said yes and no and and then Tom asked me if I have any Advices for him to to get tenure to survive and oist so I thought really hard and Then my question to Tom was oh, maybe you can work on something else instead of termites For example really cute hermit crabs. That's abundant in Okinawa But Tom was so nice instead of telling me this is a crazy bad idea. He said I will consider in the near future and So within the past five years so Tom has been very productive he leads a very productive unit and So for his tenure reviews, so we got some really He got flying color comments such as he's an Extremely high scholarly distinction leading scholar in his peer group. He has been very productive and impactful Researcher and the leader in starting termites cockroaches and They're associates so So I would like to thank the jail So Tom's wife sitting in the back who provided a lot of nice pictures and to help me to understand Who is Tom really and so so here's some pictures of So Tom and jail before they got married and this is their wedding photo and and their two kids and this picture was taken more recently and So I prepare five slides and I want people to pay attention to to Tom's hair Okay, Tom's childhood So younger and Teenager years I learned that Tom is a very good ping-pong player and At a competitive level and so I think we should convince Tom to to go to let for now there's a ping-pong table and heavily used so so you can have some battleship with your unit members and other and other professors and And Tom also had a really cute bulldog when he was a kid and so so we want to highlight this and This is another picture, but but pay attention. So all the pictures here Tom had a lot of hair And so these pictures highlight Tom during his PhD and postdoc years and Of course beer. It's always important for people from Belgium and So this picture shows Tom is super happy and professional in the field collecting samples and Also, so by looking at this photo. I was quite intrigued. So so Tom was holding a garbage bag And I assume this is how you collect samples in a very scientific way Yeah, that that sounds quite easy and again in the forest and I also understand that Tom works very closely with His mentor who's also a termite expert. So they they have a travel together work together and Just celebrating their I guess a nice collections with beer But I I noticed this picture Tom you look a little awkward and not super happy and I wonder why and So this slide was sent to me by your unit members and I was very happy so you can see, you know throughout the years also Tom's group has grown and But I believe the this afternoon while I was preparing I believe there's a typo Unless if Tom your unit you predicted future in 2019 Everybody was wearing a mask and this is probably 2020 or 2021 and This is a more recent I guess unit photo Apparently Tom in this picture is more relaxed and happy probably after you learn that you got tenure and This is a post-10 year celebration So this photo was taken this May after the OIS graduation ceremony and The two students from Tom's unit received their PhD Very quickly well within five years and this is a picture when Tom was backing Belgian in September this year and taking a well Deserved to rest and that was very jealous about the hot chocolate and ice cream and waffles and That's hard to find here in Okinawa. And so one last slide. So So Tom works very hard during the day and on the side So professor by the day at night. So Tom apparently is a very good dishwasher very serious if you zoom in and so he's rubbing the plates very vigorously and So he's also a very good father helping his kids for bug hunting DNA extraction and so on and so finally so Tom is also a hair stylist on the side and so you can see from this photo. So obviously I'm sure you have passion a lot of Passion with with hair and but this picture by looking I'm not sure who this person is but Your your brother. Okay. And all the kids were maybe watching TV but so your knees didn't look very very relaxed and Apparently two people were working on Your your knees is here. So so I'm sure you're getting a lot of Hairstyling experiences over the years that that's also very helpful for for your research program And so finally I just want to to end and thank everybody who who is here and after Tom's lecture So we'll serve Some coffee and snacks. So in the patio area, but there's some surge with COVID cases. So again, everyone should be mindful and do not talk too close to each other and And also preview. So we have another two lectures already lined up in January. So 24th Professor Laureno will also give her provost lecture To celebrate also her promotion to associate professor with tenure and in February. So Professor of Scotland Will give his kind of departing lecture. So we'll celebrate his retirement So well, I think I shouldn't stop and to let Tom take over Okay, hello everyone So thanks for seeing me for this a very nice introduction I mean, I think you did it much better than what I would have done by myself. So thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for that So so so I'm a passionate it by I have a passion for bucks Dance the title of my talk. So like before my my my talk some people just like told me Oh Tom, you are going to talk. I mean your seminar is so long. You are going to talk for for two hours So I want to reassure everyone in the room. I'm not going to talk for two hours I'm supposed to talk for 40 minutes or something like that. So The two hours include all the snacks and the coffee that you will have after one So so so yeah, so my understanding is that this series of seminar is supposed to be a much more like personal So they will I'm going to talk a bit of course about about research But that's maybe only a part of my talk I will maybe talk a bit more about maybe oh, I owe a Belgian guy. Maybe Finally became one of the 10 or 20 Belgian now living in In Okinawa and greatly contributing actually to the amount of Belgian population in Okinawa because in order to Of my lab members are also Belgian so So when I when I was kids I wasn't so much into a box So I think like Japanese kids are often they often like bugs But like in my in my case what I like was much bigger creature So I was really I'd really a passion for for dinosaurs. So like here you can see the very famous at least in Belgium We think they are very famous the very famous iguanodon of Bernice are that you can see in the National History Museum in in in Brussels and I really love this very big Big animals. I wasn't so much into the the tiny bucks. So my passion for for bugs just like came later Maybe as a teenager Where when I started to collect all sorts of of of bugs But especially still those that were very big So I didn't really have a passion for things that you cannot see very easily I mean, I think that everyone's bit like that you you want to see big things and So here are a couple of of bugs that you can find in Belgium Among the biggest Beetles that that we have I mean, of course, they are quite small compared to what you can find in Okinawa So Then when I went to University first in the Asian then in Brussels. I wanted to study Biology with the idea that I would one day just become an entomologist someone that study insects and Because in the University of Brussels, they are not so many People studying insects the choice was actually quite small and I ended up Walking on the on termite with you was that you can see here Termites was not like so attractive to me because termites tend to be like relatively small They are whitish. They are they are not really appealing in their in their appearance but if convinced me to walk on the on termite for my master thesis because Because a lot of in termite colony you can also often find beetles. So like the This this is a beetle that you can find only in some some termite colony So like these beetles if only with termite you never find them anywhere else than in termite colonies And they are very specific. So you have like one beetles that That is specific to a particular species of Termite so this is a staphilin it for those who know a bit about about beetles But they don't necessarily look like a staphilin it. So that's what's very cool about them They are really tiny, but they are very beautiful. I think so like here is a Few more pictures of this termitophilus staphilin it so they really don't even look like beetles They look more like some some kind of larvae You find them actually with termite larvae and they don't really look like beetles. That's like a normal What what normal staphilin is normally look like But but these guys because they they they live in the termite colonies. They really just like acquire some particular morphology They are very slow And and they they they are very well integrated in inside a termite colony stands. They have this sort of like weird shape Yeah, and one good point actually about walking on termites is that they are tropical insects, right? And that's mean that if you want to walk on termites and you need to go to collect them in the tropics Which was quite attractive to me. I mean the Belgian weather is not It's not what we have the best in Belgium. I mean Okinawa is much nicer I'm very happy to be in Okinawa right now rather than in Belgium to escape the winter and And therefore I did my PhD. So I fell in love with termites first was with beetles, but then I fell in love with termites and I Went every year to here is French goiana to tropical rainforest to collect Some some beaters and have good times in the in the rainforest. I mean like good time It's it's all a question of definition because for people that don't like mosquito, for example Then tropical rainforests probably not a great place where to go, but if you don't mind mosquitoes, then it's pretty good And I did my PhD on on the termizer for of from from French Goiana and after four years. So in 2010 I finally Defended my PhD thesis that was very specific. So it was about the Anoprotermes group. So it's a group of termites that have no soldiers. Normally termites have soldiers and walkers But in this group of termites They are no soldiers. So they lost this they lost their their soldier cast and Yes, so so so after that, of course, I wanted to do some Some postdoc and they had several possibilities. So I got this grant from from Belgium Then I had someone From a Florida that was proposing me to go for for a postdoc for a two years postdoc in Florida You know for the order a deal. So that's my representation of Florida I mean, if I be some other representation, of course, I'm nice nice beaches But I Yeah, it's a bit paradoxical, but I wasn't so much attracted by these nice beaches Although I ended up in Okinawa where the beaches are very nice. I was more attracted by the cold Hokkaido so in in Sapporo, so there was termites biologists there even though they are basically no termites except for one invasive species in in Sapporo and And yeah, Sapporo is very nice place, but it's very cold There is a there is a lot of snow So it is actually not that different from from Belgium except that there is more snow and it's maybe even colder than then Belgium So I stayed there for two years. That was quite enjoyable It's really good time there. I mean, there were a few a few problem or a few difficulties on the way. I mean, maybe not only that was the time also of Fukushima, I mean the great earthquake and then Fukushima, so I was in Hokkaido So I mean like I was listening at the news and in Japan. They said yeah, don't worry everything is okay My parents just like for me. They just told me oh, you need to go go back to Belgium as soon as possible It's going to blow up and so it's a bit difficult Time the water disappeared from the shelf very rapidly. I mean one week There was no more water on the shelf, but we still had toilet papers so that was okay, and I decided to stay basically in In Hokkaido and I think I did not regret this choice. It was a very good experience However At the end of this postdoc Unexpectedly I basically just like ended up Three months before not knowing where I will do my next Where I will do my next postdoc so I applied for these grants. I really thought I would have them I was really just so naive. I mean some of the grants I got them two years earlier So I couldn't imagine that you can feel what you got actually two years earlier, but it was a very good lesson So yeah, so I just basically just ended up three months before the end of my contract with possibly with with nothing After after this contract is over and yeah, so I just like started to apply to a couple of jobs and try to see what I what I can do and Lucky me I found this Postdoc advertisement where they were looking for someone who work on the plant insect interaction especially on termites and and Ecology, so this was exactly my profile. So I just apply and I I got the offer and therefore I moved to Singapore so in 2012 I moved to Singapore which was It is good and bad of course I mean in US. It's a very it's a very nice university. I think it's one of the biggest University in in Asia So it was a good place where where to go It's also where I met my wife in Singapore. So that was an order a good reason to go there or do I didn't know that in advance and and Yeah, for some of you that I guess that if you think about Singapore you probably think about something like that, right? So it's like a very fancy city a lot of skyscraper Yeah, like this is Yeah, very very nice very nice place that that could look like us some big city somewhere in United States Except that it's really a tropical But actually in Singapore you have also some nice natural Places, so you still have some tropical forests all the center of Singapore is basically tropical Forests so you have I mean tropical forest is of various quality. You have like some really good nice primary Tropical rain forest and you have also some more like secondary Forests so things that have been cut down and then regrow and and maybe like 50 years ago or so But you have quite a lot of of animal diversity in this forest and you have quite a lot of termites I think I collected something like 70 species or together of termites in Singapore. So it's not not that bad Yeah, so this was like a pictures at that time in in Singapore so so At that time I also wanted really a lot to basically move to Australia So I've always been more more attracted by the east and maybe a few if you just like go first to Japan Go to Singapore then I mean the next step must be must be Australia, right? So So I made a series of application I mean it was quite quite a difficult I got rejected several time But I think it's so it's so it is right when you apply to a grant You often are rejected and then you should just like reapply again and and try to to get the I mean to to use the commands That that you got from the reviewer to improve your grant application and then ultimately trying several time you just like end up succeeding so after Two and a half year I finally moved to To to Australia so in Sydney. I don't see many of these in in Sydney You can see them in the Sydney zoo, but not really in the city But if you just get out of of Sydney, I mean it's full of kangaroo everywhere and And then yeah, I spend so this was picture of of the lab member while then in Sydney in this nice Like 19th century building in the University of Sydney and at that time I Wasn't invited with my boss at that time Nate Nate law. I was invited to Okinawa to the University of the Ryukyu to give a seminar at the University of Ryukyu. So I was invited by Toku Dasan with still one of my collaborators now and and yeah, King of San here Was a student of Toku Dasan and became a postdoc in my lab for four years and During that trip to Okinawa. I also had my first experience of the local gastronomy with this delicious Tabuchi soba so it was in 2015 and of course the Ryukyu University is actually not too far from OIST and Therefore we visited also. So like here is a picture of some research that we did with with Simone and also with Toku Dasan and King of San just published two years ago and We visited we visited OIST so that that's actually a Nate At OIST so from the first time I was at OIST and this picture is taken exactly in the place where my lab is not located. So I don't know if it is some sort of like Premonition or but I visited basically OIST and went exactly visiting exactly the place which became my lab two years two years later and Yeah, here's the only picture that I was able to find of me at OIST at that time. So I'm just there Looking on the bridge between I think the central building and the lab Three three. I believe it's a no lab two. Sorry. I'm always confused with the number still after five or six years And then of course when I came to OIST I was very Impressed I mean first of all I like Japan I tried several times to apply to assistant professor job in in Japan Therefore I wanted to come back to Japan and when I visited OIST I just thought oh, it's a really great place I really would like to to be here So I just added my fellowship at the University of Sydney, but I thought okay I'm just going to make an application just for this one. So I never really applied much to assistant professor position Maybe just yeah, I did maybe five ten application altogether in the past So I just like really thought okay I will put all I have try to get the best possible application and I was invited for for interview So soon after so I was very happy about that. I this was the title of my talk at that time in 2016 in April 2016 so investigating the factor explaining the rise of termites to dominance because I really wanted this job I really put in a lot of effort. I think sometimes it's what you need right? I mean if you really want something then you need to put in the effort You need to basically work very hard. So when I was invited for for this interview I I walk maybe on my talk and my my interview for perhaps a month just like really only working on on on on that But it was worth it, right? So at that time I proposed here to to investigate the factors explaining the rise of termites to dominance and the Logics behind that is that termites are extremely abundant in the tropical ecosystem So in the tropical rainforest, but also in tropical savanna. So here you can see some termite nest and This is more visible in tropical savanna actually. So so here is a picture from Australia Around Darwin in Australia and all these are termites mounds. So all these termites basically feed on the grass and they feed on the wood That's they collect in in the savanna. So like the animal biomass that termites represent is actually really huge So all together in tropical Ecosystem termites make up up to 25 percent of the animal Biomass. So they are the most abundant animal together with ants So they are so abundant because they are the main decomposer of Lignosellios. So Lignosellios is basically wood and this is the most abundant Biological polymer biopolymer on earth So if you feed on the most abundant compound on earth and obviously you can Potentially become also yourself extremely abundant and they are also considered as ecosystem Engineer in the in the tropics meaning that they really shape the the ecosystem So so so what I propose is to To just like try to answer this question It's a question that you cannot really answer because it's very very vast Question so it's all the termite basically became so Important in tropical ecosystems. So why why is it that they are so so so abundant was it that they are successful? Or that they are among this this very successful group of organism. So when I came So yes, so as Amy pointed out the timing of the of the picture is not always we always just like take pictures after At the end of the of the financial year So it's always like this picture always sort of like one year one year later But but here we are not masked therefore you cannot you cannot see that we are actually a bit a bit delayed and so I just like came to us and Started the evolutionary Genomics unit So, yeah, I mean I guess that you might wonder because so for now I mostly talk about termites and but my passion for bugs and so on so why actually Naming my unit the evolutionary genomics. Why not name it the bug unit? Or I don't know. I mean I think the evolutionary genomic units on sounds very cool But there is also like some additional reason why why I think that the name fit basically what we are trying to do So I mean like the question that we want to answer is like oh The termite became so important tropical ecosystem I mean we also do similar kind of work on the on the cockroaches and You could I mean like what I we did that also more recently is to work on all do termites got microbial community Digest lignocellulose and evolve. So basically how they can process wood and how they evolve with their their microbial communities and all the termite colonize the wall and to answer this question We basically use some sequencing techniques. So we just like sequence a lot of specimen. We just assemble Some genomes bacterial genomes termite genomes and we try to compare these genomes So what we actually really do with some sort of evolutionary genomics We try to to compare these genomes and from this comparison Understand basically all these genome evolves and how termite evolves and all the co-evolution between termites and their microbes walks so Yeah, okay, so now that I just like presented or just explained about like how I got here Maybe let's talk a bit about what we did during the last five years. So Five and a half year more. Yeah, so so I'm not going to talk about everything I mean all the papers that we that we publish or every single things that that we did I will just like take a couple of key examples, which I think are representative of the work that we do and which are also like important for the unit for order reasons So This is a paper published by Alesh in 2019. So here we build a phylogenetic tree of termites Using transcriptome data and what actually I really like to do is to Collect some information some data about like many species. So we just like sample the termite phylogenetic tree We try to get as many sample as possible to sequence them We have a we have a question we sequence as many species as possible and then from there We can try to understand how how it works. So basically like how termite digest lignocellulose, but termite in general I think so there is really some advantage to work on drosophila or to work on mice because Biological systems are so complex that if you want really to go in depth On how this biological system work you need to focus on some particular organism but the problem of that is that sometimes you miss a bit about the diversity of This world and if you find something very interesting on drosophila You never know if it applies to order insect if it applies to order order animals What you need to do is to just look at it on many species and then you can look at the common rules It's something which is a bit overlooked I think in science for for good reason because it's we cannot we cannot have Hundreds of mother organisms, right? So we need to have a few mother organism but this comparison among many species is also quite important and So he has an order phylogeny built by by Simon who is here today with his mom and So so all termites basically a wood feeder, but some also like evolved soul feeding and within this group of soul feeders some Reacquired a diet based on wood. So this is when you compare like many species that that basically Evolve independently the same traits like like here So like you have two groups that independently revolve wood feeding and they are more that are not shown on these three when when you just like Study this you have some in the independent replicate so the problem is that if you Let's say study two species of nasi determinants You will never be able to know if it's something unique to nasi determinants Or if it's something which is more linked to the traits that you study So what you need is to have like independent replicates Right independent replicating but independent phylogenetic replicates So this is the kind of thing that I I like to do to just like sequence a lot of Specimens, so we just like take a lot of termite samples and we just like compare compare these samples We take him to account the phylogeny and we try to understand What a particular trait for example was the consequence of these particular traits? What are the correlation between between traits? So here I'm going to Show a few example of that Very briefly With the idea of like trying to determine how do termite got microbial community digest link notes and loss and Evolve so so what we did is to pick up a series of Termite to select a series of termite species to get their gut to sequence what they have in their gut and From there we can just infer quite a lot of things actually so we can build a phylogenetic tree So is the os phylogenetic tree of termite and we can also reconstruct phylogenetic trees Of the gut microbe that you can see here So then we can compare these phylogenetic trees and we can see if they match so that basically tell us with her How how well basically termites and their gut microbes co-evolve so if they co-evolve really strongly then you expect The tree to match very well We can also like from this metagenomes. We can also infer the functions of the gut microbiota So we can just look at the genes present in this Metagenomes and from there from there infer what the gut by microbiota actually do So so here is a neat map so very with a lot of of corals and so on so I don't expect you to Understand every details of this of this heat map so like the the column Indicate termite species and here you have a phylogeny Of of termites and the row indicates some bacterial Family so it basically show like the presence of particular bacterial family in particular termite species and What you can see actually from from from from these graphs I mean you see a lot of of colors you see some some group of bacteria that are Particularly abundant across all termites So so what you can see is that actually the gut prokaryotes involved in the main nutritional function Are present across termites so all termites basically have the same type of gut prokaryotes. They have different strains But they have the same Family of gut prokaryotes that help them to digest wood and to digest soil So basically the termite gut microbiome is largely conserved So it's inherited from the common ancestor of all termites and it has been passed down for for for very long time So We also looked at we did some PCA some principle component analysis to to look at what's the difference between termites feeding on different substrate between soul feeders with feeders termites with protist termites without gut protist And you can see some clusters. So like here are some soul feeders here are some Wood feeders here. There are some wood feeding termites that have no protest and and this Plot basically represents case I'm so like all the genes that are involved into wood digestion into Polysaccharide digestion Sorry into a carbohydrate digestion and the same patents also It's also found for order groups so order order type of Genes so the genes that are important for termites for example the genes involved in the nitrogen metabolism so basically, there's really a difference in term of metabolic capabilities of The gut microbiota of soul feeders and the gut microbiota of wood feeders differ in their metabolic capabilities and What's what's what's interesting is that it does not really differ in term of what is present or absent But most in the quantity of it. So here is again some some case I'm so some carbohydrate some genes involved into a carbohydrate Metabolism that that that are involved into the digestion of of lignocellulose and You can see some that the soul feeders basically also have actually the same gene But they just have less of it. So in this metagenome you see less genes involved Less case I'm the genes involved in in carbohydrate Metabolism so basically what's what's happening is that the acquisition of a died of soil was accompanied by a change in the Stochometry of genes involved in the important nutritional function Rather by the then by the acquisition of new genes. So you basically keep the same but you just change the proportion of it Yeah, then then I'm going to talk a bit more about the co-evolution so that that's like Something that I'm interested in for quite quite some time So so if you read just like compared to trees the trees of the hose the trees of the gut microbes then you can sort of like Determine how well they just like co-evolve together So if it's really just like the bacteria passed on from mother colony to daughter colony over Millions of years then you expect the phylogenetic three to perfectly match and of course in reality It's never exactly like that And you can infer codiver gents you can also just like see if there were some loss and also if they were some Switch or some horizontal transfer among among host So here it's it's some analysis that we did So all this work is the work of GSA We we compare the termite phylogenetic trees with phylogenetic three of of microbiota of Particular lineages of gut microbes and actually it matched very well much extremely well it much actually so well that I mean of course you can see that there are places where it doesn't really match you have also like the Like when you do phylogenetic reconstruction, there is always some uncertainties in the tree that you obtain It matched so well that actually Here is the rate of transfer that we estimated for mitochondrial gene compared to a termite mitochondrial genome phylogeny So in reality we expect to have zero but because this doesn't match we have rate that are higher than then zero So we have this like rate of transfer which are below zero point twenty five and we have quite a few Bacterialine ages which have similar rate of transfer so that means that we can explain the co-evolution between this bacteria and the mitochondrial genome Of termite without any horizontal transfer like basically you could imagine only vertical transfer and you would observe similar patterns so basically just like Let us Suggest that actually some association probably did back to more than 150 million years So the time when termites first appear so like they've been passed on for tens of millions of years and And you can see these patterns on the order termite Order bacterial phylogeny to three so the this is like color coded So that's termite phylogeny to three like here for example in blue with micro serum is and you can see this big cluster In the bacterial tree that are composed only of sequences that come from a micro serum is meaning that this bacteria You find them only With micro serum is you find them nowhere else you don't find them in order order termite yet You also don't find them in the order environment like in the soul or Wherever else you can imagine they are only associated with termite of the genus Micro serum is so that's what you explain you what you expect when you have like a lot of like vertical in irritants And yeah, and so this this is something that we we observe for quite a few For for a series of of a bacterial in ages, of course some bacterial in ages inside the termite gut don't follow these rules but some dominant bacterial in ages Seems to be mostly vertically Transmitted and this was the walk of of a digessa That graduated this year in March this year Yeah, so we keep on walking on this on this On this topic and know what I'm particularly excited about because I mean this this metagenome said they are very They are nice, but they are so like very frustrating I really expected to get much more from from from them the problem is that they are very fragmented and so you cannot infer pathways Very well, so it's very disappointing to be honest Although like they are interesting things that you can do with them But what we are doing now that that actually is much better is that we are using this a pack bio if I long read So like the difference is that these Illumina reads are about like 150 base pair But the pack bio reads are are 10 to 20,000 base pair and now we can actually assemble full genomes Fum full bacterial genomes from termite gut Metagenomes and that actually quite exciting because then you can really look at the genes and you can really look at the pathways for a given Groups or a given bacterial genome, so let's Finish by talking a bit about like audit termite colonize the world So like before I start with that I just like want to explain how you can use phylogeny to answer this question so here is a small termite phylogenetic tree and What you can do is to date this phylogenetic tree So so it works is that you you have some fossil record So you know that for example we have a year of species of microstereotermis that you know belong to this Lineage so you can say that this node is at least 10 million years old because the fossil is 10 million years old so you can Provide the distribution of probability So you do that for as many note as possible and from there you can sort of like in fare What is the age of every note on the phylogenetic tree? And you can also just that also provide some confidence interval and of course there are some uncertainties about these estimations Then you can look at the distribution of Modern species so like here all these microstereotermis are found in Australia here They are all found in Southeast Asia and from there you can infer What was the state of the ancestor so so here in that case you you infer you can infer that the Ancestor lived somewhere in Southeast Asia and that this ancestor dispersed to Australia So you basically can determine when and and how how termites I mean from where to where they moved around the world So this is some work that I did in the past question that I am Working on for for some time now before I joined OIST where we did we did this work on on all temity day and and Yeah, and we found like a series of of lineages That that move around around the world the world at different times they mostly moved out of Africa a bit like human but much earlier and they they moved to Southeast Asia to South America and to Australia at different times a bit later in Australia so When I joined OIST I managed to convince mengling To do her PhD on that topic and she actually graduated also at the end of last year so the 31st December of last year to be very precise and She just like continue the work So she basically use all the sequence that we are generated But she of course also added a series of of new sequences because we want of course to do new new work, right? So what I mean I'm just going to present one of the things that she did which is a paper submitted now in ecography for more than one year We always have like round of revisions of six months. I've never experienced that for a journal before So if you have to submit a paper to ecography, I suggest you just think twice and So you have a series of a lineages that appear to be only specific to to Madagascar. So here is the summary and We can basically infer that most of the diversity of termites present in Madagascar arrived relatively recently I mean recently at the geological timescale it arrived between 10 to 15 million years ago Which is a bit similar to the diversity of termites that you find in In Australia, there is always like this sort of argument about whether the diversity where you have like and they mix Lineages in one place like in Madagascar. Is it something very ancient? that date from the time when Madagascar was still connected to Africa or is it something more recent and here we can say that yeah I think like it's something very recent at least at the geological timescale. So now I Just want to talk a bit about why because I'm in this type of work. I think it's very nice to do It's natural history. I really love doing a natural history, but there are so like some Interests about doing that and one of the points that I'm not so sure like how much aware you are of that But Madagascar is a place where the nature has been heavily damaged by by human impact. So like this is a pictures From I mean typical kind of pictures that you can see from Madagascar nowadays when you reach like 300 kilometers from Antananarivo the capital of Madagascar you just don't see trees anymore It's it all gone. It used to be like covered by by forest or by by savannah So they were there was quite a lot of vegetation, but it's all gone So like there are still people living in the bottom of the valley So what they do is that they can still grow something so what they do is that they burn The top the grass that you can see here They just burn everything so then when the the rainy season arrived everything is washed down to the bottom of the valley And they can still grow something But this is pretty much the only way or they can still grow something and it's not going to last forever, right? I mean like all this All this land is completely infertile. You cannot grow much there anymore. It's it's pretty much like a desert Just like over with some really small grass and and and still like like if you look at the At the natural reserve, so it's a picture taken in natural reserve in Madagascar people are still cutting wood So like this is still progressing right? I mean That's that's a picture of a bag filled with wood So we were just like in the park and people just we were people cutting wood We just went there and they just like left but they they left also back a field with wood so even this natural reserve are quite threatened and Yeah, I mean a lot of the diversity there is going to be extinct in the next, I don't know 20 50 years I'm so sure but he probably a lot went extinct already So so basically what we can do is to document this diversity Hopefully it will not go extinct, but I think it's very likely to go extinct actually so Yeah, so this is the kind of thing that you can do with a termite. So it's a nice picture of termite from from Madagascar So I hope that I Managed to convince you that termites are actually quite cool And because I want to end the talk on a more positive note than on the destroyed nature of Madagascar Yeah, I'm very happy. So this is a picture that Amy showed actually as well I'm very happy to see my my two son liking a buck as well. So I never really tried to influence them They just like got to like Bugs by themselves. So I think in that case, it's not really Culturally inherited but more genetically inherited their love for bugs were generated genetically inherited and here is a Picture of my older son Laro with his bug collection. So he called it is museum With some nice bug that that he received and he really loves to just like when you look at bugs He really likes he really likes them and I hope it will continue So that's yes, I would like to thanks everyone in my lab, of course because obviously You never achieve things alone you need you need some people some good people behind to be able to be successful and Yes, so like recently we had a two new PhD student Julie and song training the unit and Kakosan or greater UA. We are so lucky to have and Yeah, and I would like to thank you for your attention