Summary:
Biological diversity is unevenly distributed across space, time and taxonomic groups. This disparity is particularly evident in evolutionary radiations – episodes of rapid diversification during which dozens to hundreds of new species form in a short period of time.
Recent work has focused on mechanisms which provide the genetic variation underpinning evolutionary radiations. However, the mechanisms responsible for the evolution of reproductive isolation between species in evolutionary radiations remain poorly understood, and are the focus of this project.
In this project we will test the hypothesis that rapid speciation in evolutionary radiations can be driven by fixation of epistatic deleterious and compensatory mutations in diverging lineages, using a combination of experimental evolution and analysis fo genomic data from evolutionary radiations.
Keywords:
Speciation; Genomics; Experimental evolution
Partners:
University of Zurich; University of Oxford; University of California, Santa Barbara.
