Inês Fragata

Group Leader

Experimental Evolution Tri-trophic interactions Fitness landscapes Population dynamics

I did my PhD under the supervision of Margarida Matos (Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon) and Mauro Santos (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona). I fell in love with experimental evolution and with the combination of theoretical models and empirical data to study adaptation at different biological levels. During this time, we showed that historical differentiation in populations of Drosophila subobscura leaves a genomic and karyotypic footprint, that is not erased by selection, which does not happen at the phenotypic level.

After my PhD, I was a postdoc in Claudia Bank’s lab at IGC for three years. Using statistical and mathematical modelling, fitness landscape theory and data analyses, we found that synonymous (silent) mutations may shape the adaptive landscape and that the distribution of fitness effects of mutations can be affected by the environment and biochemical properties of proteins.

Between 2019 and 2020 I was a postdoc in the MITE2 lab within the ERC COMPCON, investigating the role of interspecific interactions during adaptation to metal pollution, using experimental evolution. From August 2020 to 2023 I was a Junior Researcher at CE3C where I continued my work with spider mites. Here I focused on investigating the genomic and transcriptomic changes during adaptation to heavy metal pollution and/or competitors, and how adaptation affected coexistence between competitor species. Up until now, we’ve showed that coexistence between competitors can be affected by timing of arrival and by evolution in an abiotic stress.

Since September 2023 I am Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology at FCUL. I teach Experimental Design and Evolution courses, as well the CE3C advanced courses related with R and statistical analyses. I am currently running an ERC starting grant (DYNAMICTRIO, 2022-2027) to understand how the interplay between population dynamics and evolution can affect the resilience of tri-trophic systems.

Overall, I am interested in understanding how different biotic and abiotic factors affect adaptation to new (complex) environments, specifically focusing on the feedbacks between ecology and evolution, and how these eco-evo dynamics generate/maintain genetic diversity. I also work/worked on the role of historical contingencies and chromosomal inversions in adaptation and how to combine fitness landscape theory and empirical data to unravel the distribution of fitness effects of new mutations and predict adaptation to new environments.