Evolutionary genomics of Canids: Extinction, Colonization and Admixture

Events - Seminars in Biodiversity & Evolution

22 Oct 2024 - Shyam Gopalakrishnan, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen | 15h00 | Hybrid Seminar

Evolutionary genomics of Canids: Extinction, Colonization and Admixture

CASUAL SEMINAR IN BIODIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION

Canids are an excellent group of species to understand the separate but related evolutionary processes of domestication, adaptation, and admixture. In this talk, Shyam Gopalakrishnan will present three different stories from dogs, wolves, and golden jackals, highlighting both evolutionary processes and ecological interactions in play during the evolutionary history of canids. First, he will present the intertwined histories of golden jackals and grey wolves in Europe, and how anthropogenic pressures, combined with climate change, have played a role in the spread of the golden jackals, and the diminishing footprint of grey wolves in Europe. Second, we will look at two examples of admixture-mediated adaptation in dogs, the first leading to dogs adapting to the extreme conditions of the Arctic and the second enabling dogs to reproduce non-seasonally.

Shyam Gopalakrishnan is an Associate Professor at GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen. He got his PhD in Biostatistics, with a focus on statistical genetics, in 2011 from the University of Michigan. At the University of Copenhagen, he has been working on two concurrent research lines - canid evolutionary genomics and host-microbiome data integration and method development. For the first research line, his work focuses on the role of admixture and recent colonization and demographic history of various canids to understand their interactions and effects on local ecology. In the second research line, his work is concentrated on developing methods for multi-omics integration with a focus on host-microbiome interactions, both on short and long evolutionary time scales. In his spare time, he is a massive chess enthusiast and an amateur player.

[Host: Raquel Godinho, Ecogenomics - ECOGEN]