The Ben Collen Memorial Lecture 2026

The Ben Collen Memorial Lecture is an annual event at which UCL’s Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research hosts a world-leading, mid-career scientist in the field of conservation biology. The lecture is in honour of Dr. Ben Collen who was a renowned conservation scientist and greatly admired colleague. Ben died in 2018 aged 40.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception to which you are all warmly invited. The event is open to colleagues from inside and outside UCL.

This year's speaker is Dr Sinead English from the University of Bristol.

Title: A developmental perspective on climate change adaptation

Abstract:

Climate change is bringing more frequent and intense extreme events, including heatwaves. Developmental processes are key for understanding how animals will cope in this rapidly changing and unpredictable world. On the one hand, early development is a period of high vulnerability and experiencing stress at critical life stages can have lasting, negative impacts. At the same time, adaptive responses during sensitive windows can promote later resilience and even transcend generations, allowing faster adaptation than possible through mutational processes. Here, I give an overview of research in my lab on developmental responses to environmental stress, with a particular focus on pregnancy as a vulnerable period. I first present theoretical approaches to understand the contrasting roles of vulnerability and adaptation, and present insights from comparative analyses across insects on plasticity to temperature extremes. I describe our approach of combining insights from experiments on insects which experience pregnancy with analyses of population health studies, to understand both the evolutionary processes and molecular mechanisms underlying how critical early-life periods set the stage for success or failure when it comes to predicting climate change responses.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research