Lab-meeting about gene expression, sexual dimorphism, sexual selection and condition dependence

This week, I was thinking that we should discuss sexual dimorphism from two different perspectives: a "G-matrix" perspective and a gene expression perspective. The two different papers I have chosen hopefully shed different light on sexual selection and the process of sexual selection. The two papers show how sexual selection might leave a signature, either on the molecular level (the first paper) or on the trait-level (the second paper).

The first paper I would like to discuss is from Locke Rowe's group at University of Ontario (Canada), and you can download it here. I heard Locke give a talk about this at the European Evolutionary Biology Meeting ("ESEB") in Italy in August last year, and I already then thought that this was a very interesting subject.

In particular since most of us (at least me!) are not particularly interested in these novel molecular tools per se, but rather wish to understand how they can be used to illuminate problems and processes in phenotypic evolution, at the whole-organism level, I was thinking that we could get some idéa of how transcriptomics might be used to achieve this goal. Hopefully, we will have a good discussion about this on this coming lab-meeting.

The second paper is a more tradition quantitative-genetic study of intersexual genetic correlations by Steve Arnold's group, and this other paper can be downloaded here.

We meet at the usual time and place, i. e.:

Where: "Darwin" room, 2nd floor (Ecology Building)
When: Wednesday, May 5, at 10.15.

Visit by Thomas F. Hansen and Arnaud Le Rouzic this week

This week our department will be visited by theoretical evolutionary biologist Thomas F. Hansen, who is currently professor at University of Oslo in Norway. I am pleased to host Thomas during his visit to Lund, as I visited his department Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) in May last year, and it is now my time to take care of him as he visits our department.

Thomas former postdoc Arnaud Le Rouzic will also visit us, and will give a short presentation of his research during our lab-meeting on Wednesday (10.15; Thomas will arrive later, in Wednesday afternoon). During our lab-meeting on Wednesday, I was thinking we should also discuss a paper about evolutionary quantative genetics, authored by Steve Chenoweth et al:

Author(s): Chenoweth SF (Chenoweth, Stephen F.)1, Rundle HD (Rundle, Howard D.)2,3, Blows MW (Blows, Mark W.)1

AMERICAN NATURALIST Volume: 175 Issue: 2 Pages: 186-196 Published: FEB 2010

Abstract: Although divergent natural selection is common in nature, the extent to which genetic constraints bias evolutionary trajectories in its presence remains largely unknown. Here we develop a general framework to integrate estimates of divergent selection and genetic constraints to estimate their contributions to phenotypic divergence among natural populations. We apply these methods to estimates of phenotypic selection and genetic covariance from sexually selected traits that have undergone adaptive divergence among nine natural populations of the fly Drosophila serrata. Despite ongoing sexual selection within populations, differences in its direction among them, and genetic variance for all traits in all populations, divergent sexual selection only weakly resembled the observed pattern of divergence. Accounting for the influence of genetic covariance among the traits significantly improved the alignment between observed and predicted divergence. Our results suggest that the direction in which sexual selection generates divergence may depend on the pattern of genetic constraint in individual populations, ultimately restricting how sexually selected traits may diversify. More generally, we show how evolution is likely to proceed in the direction of major axes of genetic variance, rather than the direction of selection itself, when genetic variance-covariance matrices are ill conditioned and genetic variance is low in the direction of selection.

The paper can be downloaded here. Most of you probably already know that Steve Chenoweth is the postdoc host of Tom Gosden, former PhD-student in our lab.

Also, you should of course not miss the exciting Thursday seminar (18 February at 14.00 in "Blue Hall") by Thomas, also on the theme of quantitative genetics, with the title:

Measuring evolvability and constraints with examples from the evolution of Dalechampia blossoms

We do thus have a very exciting week ahead of us!

New PhD-thesis in the lab: Fabrice Eroukhmanoff

I am pleased to announce that a new PhD-thesis will now be defended in our group: Fabrice Eroukhmanoff's Magnum Opus "The interplay Between Selection and Constraints on adaptive Divergence and Phenotypic Evolution".

This is the third Ph.D.-student that has finished his/her thesis in our lab, the previous two were Jessica Abbott (2006) and Tom Gosden (2008). You can find an abstract and more informaton about the thesis here. Well done Fabrice!

The thesis will be defended on Friday November 20 in the Blue Hall (Ecology Building). The external opponent will be Professor Andrew Hendry from McGill University Canada, and the thesis committé will consist of Professors Anna Qvarnström (Uppsala University), Karin Rengefors (Limnology, Lund University) and Janne S. Kotiaho (University of Jyväskylä, Finland). The thesis defence is open to everyone, and I encourage you to participate in this exciting event.

Lab-meeting on G-matrix divergence i isopods

This coming Wednesday (16 September), we will discuss genetic correlations and G-matrices in aquatic isopods (Asellus aquaticus). It is a manuscript that Fabrice and I have worked on for quite a while now, and which is one of the papers in his Ph.D.-thesis that he will defend on November 20. Naturally, we would appreciate all constructive input and criticisms so that we can incorporate these before Fabrice will handle in his thesis to the printer on October 20.

This manuscript which deals with morphological variation and quantiative genetics of morphology, should also be of interest to Tina and Sanna, who have been working recently on phenotypic and genetic correlations of behavioural traits in these isopods.

You can get this manuscript by e-mailing me (erik.svensson@zooekol.lu.se) or Fabrice (fabrice.eroukhmanoff@zooekol.lu.se). If Fabrice sends me the last version, I will also send out this manuscript to the group tomorrow (Monday).

Time and place as usual: "Darwin-room" at 10.00 on Wednesday 16 September. Any fika volunteer?