Project description
Studying butterfly toxicity to understand evolution
The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is an incredibly important ecosystem as it offers the habitat for a biodiverse flora and fauna, hosting among others large tropical and subtropical heliconiine-Passiflora communities. Heliconius are toxic butterflies because they contain cyanide-releasing compounds called cyanogenic glucosides, which they can both biosynthesise or uptake from Passiflora plants, their co-evolutionary partner, during larval feeding. The genetic basis of their toxicity and how this varies in different populations remains unexplored. Merging ecology, genetics, biochemistry and evolutionary biology, the EU-funded Cyanide Evolution project will investigate how toxicity and interactions with Passiflora plants has shaped the evolution of Heliconius butterflies.
Objective
The colourful and toxic Heliconius butterflies are well-established models to study evolution of aposematims and mimicry, yet the genetic basis of their toxicity and how this varies in different populations remains unknown. Heliconius are toxic butterflies because they contain cyanide-releasing compounds called cyanogenic glucosides, which they can both biosynthesize or uptake from Passiflora plants, their co-evolutionary partner, during larval feeding. This multidisciplinary project brings together ecology, genetics, biochemistry and evolutionary biology to investigate how toxicity and interactions with Passiflora plants has shaped the evolution of these butterflies. Thus, I will combine the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas with different OMICs approaches (metabolomics, transcriptomics and phenomics) to (1) decipher the genetic and phenotipic bases of cyanogenesis in Heliconius butterflies and (2) unravel the evolutionary trajectory of this defence system in the Heliconiine tribe. Moreover, I will also (3) establish how cyanogenesis vary within and between tropical and subtropical heliconiine-Passiflora communities of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot endangered by extreme deforestation.
This project will give me the unique opportunity to expand my knowledge and skills repertoire on genetics, ecology, evolutionary biology and bioinformatics. I will be trained in advanced techniques such CRISPR-Cas, gene expression analysis, R programing, statistical methods applied to community ecology and matabolomics, etc. Also, during this fellowship I will excel my teaching/supervision, project management and communication abilities. All these expertise will be extremely valuable for the execution of the project and will bring great progress to my career development, increasing my chance of of reaching a long-term position in academia.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
CB2 1TN Cambridge
United Kingdom