THE ROLE OF NATURAL SELECTION IN SPECIES GENOMIC DIFFERENTIATION AND ADMIXTURE - COMPARATIVE APPROACH IN HARES AND MICE

STUDENT SEMINAR IN BIODIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION

Understanding the role of natural selection in genome divergence and reproductive isolation leading to speciation, but also in adaptive introgression, remains a major endeavour in Evolutionary Biology that genomics allows tackling in an unprecedented way. Using an acquired dataset of whole genome sequences from populations of several species of hares and mice, I will explore the landscape of genomic divergence and differentiation between several pairs of recently diverged taxa with varying degrees of divergence, hybridisation and ecological differentiation. The comparative nature of our approach will allow appraising the relative roles of the species biology (e.g. biogeography of differentiation, degree of hybridisation, ecology) and of genomic characteristics (e.g. recombination variation) in shaping the genome divergence landscape.

João Marques holds a MSc in Biochemistry – Biomolecular methods from the University of Aveiro. Currently, João is a first year PhD student of the BIODIV program and he is working under the supervision of Dr. José Melo-Ferreira (CIBIO-InBIO) and Dr. Pierre Boursot (ISEM-UM) as part of the CONGEN/POPGEN groups. His interests focus on population and speciation genomics. Specifically, João's research focus on applying genomic tools to understand the speciation patterns of mice and hares.

[Host: José Melo-Ferreira, Conservation Genetics and Wildlife Management]