Liliana Farelo

My research areas of interest are Population Genetics, Speciation and Conservation Biology. I am mainly interested in the study of the evolutionary processes underlying speciation, the genetic architecture of reproductive isolation and the genomic consequences of introgressive hybridization between recently diverged species.

Currently, I am developing my master thesis on the role of the X chromosome on reticulate evolution in hares (Lepus spp.) by studying patterns of differentiation and introgression along the X chromosome in two distinct scenarios of interspecific hybridization: i) ancient contact and admixture between Lepus granatensis and L. timidus in the Iberian Peninsula, and ii) ongoing gene flow between L. granatensis and L. europaeus in northern Spain.

I am also involved in a project aimed at investigating cytonuclear co-evolution in L. granatensis , one of several temperate hare species affected by massive mitochondrial DNA introgression from the cold-adapted L. timidus. We intend to perform a rigorous evaluation of the relative contribution of both deterministic and stochastic processes to the observed reticulate pattern in the frame of past range dynamics during glacial cycles.