Investigating evolution in real time using genomics.

How populations adapt to new and changing environments is becoming more and more important for understanding our rapidly changing world. While, we know that these rapid changes are often heritable we don't know much about the genetics underlying these changes. We are now at stage where whole genomes can be examined for many organisms, and therefore we can target rapidly evolving populations to examine the genetic basis of rapid adaptation. This proposal will take advantage of a unique evolution experiment in the wild. Here, guppies (small tropical fish) were transplanted from a high predation locality upstream above waterfall barriers where they are free from predation in four independent streams. Phenotypic data shows that the populations quickly adapted to their new environments by becoming larger and more colourful; traits that evolve in naturally colonized low predation localities. We have shown that after just 5 years, these populations are diverging from their source at isolated parts of the genome, indicating adaptive genetic changes.
Project Aims and Methods The proposal aims to study evolution in action by taking advantage of a unique experimental fish system. The successful student will investigate how newly introduced populations adapted to their new environments by looking at whole genome sequences (WGS) from across multiple time points. This project will use WGS of the four newly introduced populations at different sampling time points (5 years, and 10 years after introduction), their source population, and naturally colonized low predation populations.
The project will answer three major questions: 1) How are genomes evolving over time? 2) Do independent population evolve convergently? 3) How does evolution interact with the changing ecology (i.e. population growth)?