AgriPop Friday Talks

Friday's Agripop Talks

  15 March 2013 - 11:30 - Salle Ragondin

The evolutionary history of Petrels: 

A microevolutionary and macroevolutionary approach 

 

Adriana Iglesias Vasquez

 Tube-nosed seabirds. Yes, exactly. This week's seminar will be about "tube-nosed seabirds in the bird order Procellariiformes" (Wikipedia docet), commonly known as petrels. But you can do much better and these birds have stimulated the immagination of poets -- you might recall:

Up above the sea's grey flatland, wind is gathering the clouds. In between the sea and clouds proudly soaring the Petrel, reminiscent of black lightning.

Glancing a wave with his wingtip, like an arrow dashing cloudward, he cries out and the clouds hear his joy in the bird's cry of courage.

In this cry -- thirst for the tempest! Wrathful power, flame of passion, certainty of being victorious the clouds hear in that bird's cry.

 Much better, isn't it? And, it turns out, petrels are also interesting from an evolutionary point of view, with a clear lack of research about their evolutionary history. And that's the subject of Adriana's PhD thesis:

Evolution in simple words is understood as the change in the form and behavior of organisms among generations. Variation in the organism’s forms occurs at all levels from DNA sequences to macroscopic morphology promoting the diversity of life (Futuyma, 1998). To understand the processes that shape such diversity evolution could be studied from two approaches acting at two levels and on two timescales: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution acts rapidly within populations through adaptive and neutral evolution while macroevolution occurs slowly and the patterns it produces are driven by speciation and extinction (Stearns & Hoekstra, 2005).

My thesis research will focus on these two evolutionary scales having as a biological model a group of the Procellariidae family well known as Petrels. The evolutionary history of these seabirds is unclear, as most of evolutionary studies have focused on terrestrial birds, and likely complex,  with two opposed evolutionary forces shaping its genetic structure: phylopatry and mobility. This Friday I will introduce you the three main questions from which I will develop my thesis: 

1. Is there a correlation between neutral genetic variation and morphological traits? 

2. Is the pattern of genetic differentiation concordant across molecular marker types - nuclear and mitochondrial? 

3. What is the mechanism of speciation that better explains the formation of new species of Petrels?

Thus, come this Friday - usual time and place: 11:30 Salle Ragondin.

And the Petrel soars while crying, reminiscent of black lightning, like an arrow piercing the clouds, 

with his wing rips foam from the waves.

...