From origins to adaptations: tracing the fundamental steps of Darwin’s finch evolution

Rapid environmental and climatic changes threaten the world's biodiversity heritage, underscoring the importance of investigating species' adaptive potential.

This task is now facilitated by the development of powerful sequencing technologies and advanced computational methods, together enabling a new wave of research into previously unattainable questions.

EVOFINCH will focus on Darwin’s finches, where 18 species originated within the last million years from a common ancestor and has become one of the most iconic adaptive radiations.

Due to the addition of a new closely related outgroup species to our genomic dataset and the implementation of new sequencing technologies together with cutting-edge computational methods, EVOFINCH will trace the main steps of the evolutionary history of Darwin’s finches with unprecedented resolution - from their origins to the history of their adaptation.

With the support of the MSCA programme, I will first determine the phylogenetic relationship and compare long-read alignments between the new outgroup and Darwin's finches using comparative genomics and phylogenomics.

Next, I will assess the severity of the bottleneck during the colonization of the Galapagos by quantifying the amount of lost genetic variability and identify mechanisms behind the recovery of such variability.

Finally, I will trace the evolutionary history of the adaptive alleles underlying the key traits in Darwin’s finch evolution: their beak and body size.

The project will shed new light on how evolutionary forces interplay to give rise to the observed Darwin’s finch diversity, and will enhance our understanding of species’ adaptive potential as well as their ability to recover from a population decline.

EVOFINCH will be implemented at Uppsala University under the supervision of Professor Leif Andersson, and represents a springboard for the fellow to become and independent research leader in evolutionary biology.