Drosophila
Back from the big island
Monday, November 6, 2006
Mike & I had a great field trip...except for the lack of flies! We saw many of the modified mouthparts clade & learned the basics of Drosophila attraction. Now for the real work, actually find
Getting started
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Cam, Mike, Dave Carlon & myself are planning the initial field trips to Hawaii to get this project off of the ground. It looks like early November will se us walking amongst the kipuka’s on the side
I am working with Cam Muir (University of Hawai’i, Hilo) and Mike Dunford (UH Manoa) to utilize the newly available Drosophila grimshawii genome to study local adapation and speciation in picture-winged Drosophila on the big island of Hawai’i. Picture-winged Drosophila have radiated into possibly over 1000 species in a relatively short period of time. Local adaptation to environmental differences along rainfall, temperature and elevational gradients at different sites as well as isolation due to extreme volcanism likely combine to make Hawai’i a speciation engine. To what degree does local adaptation, however, affect mating probabilities and the likelihood of incipient speciation? Our research is funded by a NSF EPSCoR REAP proposal to develop both population genetic and gene-expression tools to tackle these related questions.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0554657.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
