Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Jenny Boughman, UW Department of Zoology
Abstract: My research program addresses two venerable questions in evolutionary biology: How do new species arise? How does selection cause genetic change in nature? Both questions have a rich history in evolutionary biology going back to Darwin and the modern synthesis. Despite decades of research; however, we have only recently begun to reveal the mechanisms that generate new species in nature. Recent years have also seen phenomenal progress on understanding the genetic basis of traits. We are now able to ask questions that were simply impossible to address 20 years ago. Yet, progress on understanding how selection is acting in natural populations to cause evolutionary change at the genetic level has lagged behind. My work melds two rapidly advancing areas - mechanisms of speciation and genetics of adaptation - to investigate questions of fundamental importance to our understanding of biodiversity. I use an ideal system to study these questions - species pairs of stickleback fish (Gasterosteus spp.) found in the postglacial lakes of British Columbia. These are extremely young species and provide a window on the speciation process. Evolutionary replication allows direct experiments to test the evolutionary mechanisms involved.