Genomic basis of environmental adaptation in natural populations
The role of phenotypic plasticity in adaptive evolutionDisentangling the contributions of phenotypic plasticity and genetics to adaptive evolution is an important goal in evolutionary biology. House mice (Mus musculus domesticus) provide a unique opportunity to investigate the role of plasticity in environmental adaptation as they have broad latitudinal distributions across the Americas. For example, house mice can be found from the tropics to to the arctic, and populations inhabiting these different environments have adapted to different temperature regimes. With my advisor Michael Nachman, we are using wild-derived populations of house mice collected from temperate and tropical environments to understand the contributions of plasticity to latitudinal-related population differences.Evolution of dormancy
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