I am joining Dr. Erik Svenson’s group to work on the polymorphic damselflies, I. elegans. In this species, females present different colours, each of which also presents differences in correlated characteristics that affect their survival and reproduction. Within this system, I will be picking up from questions I have worked on during my PhD with frogs – which although very different than damselflies, are also organisms that spend their young life stages in the water and have a terrestrial adult stage. Specifically, I am interested in how organisms deal with the challenges of the very different environments they experience, and if the drastic morphological and physiological changes these organisms go through when becoming adults (i.e. metamorphosis) are an adaptation to allow organisms to simultaneously specialise into an aquatic and terrestrial environment, avoiding trade-offs of characteristics that could suit them in one habitat while being prejudicial in the other.
Although I consider myself a field biologist and hope to always and forever do research in the wild, I am taking a more ”perched” approach to answer my postdoc research questions. I’ll be looking at how the different life stages of the damselflies change in gene expression, as well as how this varies between sexes and across female types.
I am always up to help with field work, go on a bug/frog/bird watching walk, hear about other people’s research or even help brainstorm their statistics problem!
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