PRR Project

Summary

Scientific activities of the prospective researcher will focus on the characterization of microevolutionary patterns and processes during adaptation to environmental changes, making a close connection between ecology and evolution. It is therefore an essential area of research for the objectives of the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), reflecting the 3 Es of CE3C. This hiring is aligned with CE3C´s strategic plan for 2025-2029, through integration into the thematic line “Evolutionary perspectives in a Changing World”.The aim is to hire a researcher with skills that will ensure the deepening of the research on thermal adaptation done at CE3C. This will be done by real-time experimental evolution, a very powerful tool and a hallmark of CE3C.Research will focus on how populations of Drosophila sp. (the most powerful diploid model organism in Experimental Evolution) with contrasting biogeographical history adapt in real time to changing thermal environments, a frequently neglected research topic. An integrative understanding of thermal adaptation will necessarily involve several biological levels, from genes to phenotypes and populations. Such levels involve the scrutiny of the phenotype, karyotype and genome/transcriptome. At the phenotypic level, the research will include diverse biological traits such as reproductive output, mating behaviour and heat tolerance. Karyotypic analysis should focus on chromosomal inversions, associated with thermal adaptation in Drosophila. Finally, it is essential that the study includes evolutionary changes at the genomic and transcriptomic level (Evolve & Resequence), to characterize the genetic basis of thermal adaptation.The deepening of the study of thermal adaptation by the contracted researcher will also allow to test the validity of other inference tools to predict evolutionary potential under environmental change, namely the widely used “space for time” ecological survey by confronting inferences from such comparative studies of geographical (i.e. clinal) variation in natural populations with the actual, real-time response obtained by thermal experimental evolution. Finally, it is also planned to enlarge the thermal adaptation study to different Drosophila species, namely the invasive D. suzukii, considering their potential for ecosystem disruption and economical detrimental impacts in agriculture.Considering these research goals, the prospective employee should be an experienced researcher with relevant track record and demonstrated skills in applying experimental evolution as a research tool, namely to tackle thermal adaptation. He/she should also have proved experience in coordinating thermal selection and plasticity experiments, leading projects on the subject, designing experiments and managing laboratory activities ensuring long-term maintenance of populations. The researcher should have a solid scientific background in the analysis of the temporal dynamics of thermal adaptation at different levels of biological organization. He/she should thus have a strong experience in empirical analyses across those levels, particularly in the context of experimental evolution in Drosophila.This scientific research area has high scientific and economic relevance considering the increasing climate change impact on biodiversity. The expected scientific framework associated with a multi-level analysis of evolutionary responses in face of climate changes will allow unprecedented insight into the adaptive capacity of populations to respond to global warming. In this context, such research activities will specifically contribute to understand the impact of climate change on biodiversity taking into consideration the capacity of populations to adapt.The prospective researcher will also be involved in teaching. Teaching will focus mainly advanced training in Master and Ph.D. programmes, such as Organismal and Evolutionary Biology and BIODIV Ph.D. programme, namely in Experimental Evolution course at a Master level and supervision of thesis at both MSc and PhD. Level.