Project description
Cave-dwelling organisms reveal secrets of convergent evolution
Extreme conditions like those found in subterranean environments exert strong selective pressure on cave-dwelling organisms, which respond by developing similar phenotypic and physiological traits that help ensure survival. The EU-funded SPYCAVER project will address the question of whether these environmental selective pressures determine patterns of genomic convergent evolution in cave-dwelling organisms. The research fellow will apply field research, available ecological and phenotypic data, and newly generated genomic information to discover the genomic basis of adaptation to different subterranean microhabitats, the speciation mechanisms in subterranean species and the causes of phylogenetic constraint on microhabitat preference. The project's results will provide an unprecedented understanding of convergent evolution, with far-reaching implications for medicine and conservation biology.
Objective
Predicting evolution is one of the major aims of evolutionary biologists. Convergent evolution—the independent outcome of similar traits in distinct lineages—occurs frequently in nature at every level of biological organization in distinct evolutionary lineages. In this context, convergence has been considered to play contrasting roles in shaping biodiversity patterns. The success of colonizing and thriving in a new environment strongly depends on the existence, or lack, of specialized traits that ensure survival in it, a phenomenon referred to as environmental filtering. Thus, organisms adapted to extreme environmental conditions provide an ideal framework to study repeatability in evolution and, ultimately, to test for predictability, the ability to match a priori specialized traits to specific environmental conditions. Subterranean extreme environmental conditions exert strong selective pressure on strict cave-dwelling organisms which, respond by evolving a similar suit of phenotypic and physiological traits. The main aim of this project is to investigate whether environmental selective pressures, determine patterns of genomic convergent evolution in obligate cave-dwelling organisms. I will use an interdisciplinary approach, integrating field research, available ecological and phenotypic data, and newly generated genomic information to investigate the genomic bases of convergent evolution in cave-dwelling organisms. For this, I propose to investigate i) the genomic basis of adaptation to different subterranean microhabitats, ii) the speciation mechanisms in subterranean species, and iii) the causes of phylogenetic constrain on microhabitat preference. This project will give an unprecedented understanding of repeated evolution. Additionally, the results obtained may have far-reaching implications for medicine and conservation biology, of great relevance to several H2020 Focus Areas.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinator
75794 Paris
France