Alison Wee joined the University of Nottingham Malaysia (UNM) as an Assistant Professor in Dec 2020. For the past 15 years, she has worked on the biogeography, adaptation and conservation of coastal ecosystems, specifically mangroves, with the primary goal of understanding their historical and future response to global change and anthropogenic threats using molecular approaches.
Alison obtained her BSc degree in Life Sciences (2009) and PhD degree in Biological Sciences (2013) from the National University of Singapore. She was a postdoctoral fellow in Chiba University, Japan (2014) and the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, China (Dec 2015). From 2016 - 2020, she led the Ecological Genomics Team at the College of Forestry, Guangxi University (China). Her research has been supported by SEAMEO BIOTROP, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research, among others. Throughout her career, she has published >35 scientific articles and successfully graduated five MSc and two PhD students. In 2022, she was awarded the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO National Program for Women in Science Award (Malaysia) for her work on environmental DNA.
Southeast Asian Mangroves in a Changing World: Insights from Phylogeography, Gene Expression and eDNA Metabarcoding
Mangroves are one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world. Understanding the drivers and limitations of gene flow, phylogeography and genetic adaptation is crucial to effectively manage the threats and conserve the long-term evolutionary potential of mangroves. The first part of this talk summarizes key research findings on the biogeography of major mangrove tree species in Southeast Asia and the greater Indo-West Pacific region. In essence, propagule dispersal capabilities, land barriers and ocean currents are drivers of gene flow and underscores the importance of long-distance dispersal in connecting fragmented mangrove populations. The second part of the talk describes our work on abiotic stress response in mangroves, especially at the species range limits. Current understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying stress adaptation points toward diverging strategies in stress response, even among closely related species. These studies will be important in estimating the adaptive potential of mangroves under climate change. The third part of this talk focuses on recent pstudies on the application of environmental DNA (eDNA) as an effective biomonitoring tool in mangroves. Our findings demonstrated the dynamic distribution of fish species, the transient nature of eDNA in tropical waters, and the importance of bioregionalization in designing global studies.