Adaptations of Antarctic penguins in a rapidly changing environment

In the era of anthropogenic climate change, understanding species responses to environmental shifts is a central challenge in evolutionary biology. Whether standing genetic variation can aid persistence under rapid anthropogenic climate change remains an open question, as does the role of more rapid processes such as transcriptomic flexibility. Southern Ocean penguins are sentinels of climate change and a uniquely suited field system for studying adaptation, owing to their distribution across sharp environmental gradients in one of the most rapidly changing regions on Earth. This project will build on our previous advances in understanding patterns of penguin biodiversity to conduct an in-depth study of the landscape of environment-adapted molecular variation in penguins.

The overall aim of this project is to contribute to understanding the impacts of climate change on Southern Ocean penguins by assessing how they are adapted to divergent environments now. This is a broad project with many possible lines of inquiry, and the candidate is encouraged to develop specific aims according to their own interests.
We will use genomic and functional genomic datasets for populations distributed across latitudinal gradients to investigate patterns of adaptation to divergent environments. Genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic variation both within and among populations will be analysed. Genes under directional selection will be identified using whole genome comparisons, via window-based estimates of FST and genome wide association studies to detect polygenic selection. Differential gene expression among populations will be assessed, and gene ontology and co-expression network analyses carried out to infer the functional roles of selection candidates. A machine-learning regression tree-based approach will be used to determine whether a subset of molecular variation can be explained by environment, and which environmental variables are driving local adaptation.