How do complex adaptations evolve?
The natural world is a diverse place. To contend with highly variable environments, organisms have evolved a wide range of traits and behaviours as adaptations to their environment. From armour plating in stickleback to trade-offs between growth rate and cold tolerance in lodgepole pine, organisms have found many different genetic solutions to the challenge of existing in their environment. In my lab, we study a range of questions asking how such complex adaptations evolve:
- How is the genetic basis of local adaptation shaped by the interplay between natural selection and dispersal?
- Does the architecture of genome evolve to facilitate further adaptation?
- How can we use genomic technologies and bioinformatics to study adaptation?
- How do organisms adapt to rapidly changing environments?
To attempt to answer these questions about the basics of how evolution works, we use a combination of computational biology, analytical theory, comparative genomics, and observational and experimental studies of organisms in their natural environment. Study organisms I have worked with include lodgepole pine, white/Engelmann spruce, threespine stickleback and their close relatives, sunflower, and Drosophila.
