Dissecting the evolution of mimicry and bright wing patterns in tropical butterflies

The student will study the genetic architecture of wing patterns in Melinaea and Mechanitis butterflies, to understand the genomic changes that control morphological variation and to find out how genetic architecture may be involved in fast diversification. This will involve analysis of genome sequences and high throughput computational approaches for analysis of large genomic data sets. In addition the student will use techniques for characterising gene expression during development.