Genomic Signatures of Selection In Structured Populations: Detecting Temporal Shifts and Local Adaptation

Demographic and selective processes jointly influence the distribution of species in space and time.

However, their interaction remains poorly studied despite its potential to formulate evolutionary and conservation hypotheses.

GENESIS aims to characterize how temporal changes in different modes of linked selection – such as positive, negative, divergent, and adaptive introgression – impact genetic diversity in spatially structured populations. To that end, the action will be organized around four key objectives.

I will first develop theoretical models (1) and statistical software (2) to detect genomic signatures of selection and their temporal variation.

These tools will then be applied to Iberian chubs that display temperature-driven local adaptation and a mito-nuclear discordance (3), and to hybridizing North American pest sawflies to examine how selection shifted over time due to host-jumping (4).

By integrating mathematics, bioinformatics, population genetics, evolutionary theory and experimental evolution, this multidisciplinary action aims to fill critical gaps in our understanding of the demography-selection interplay in spatially structured populations.

GENESIS will be carried out with leading experts from the University of Lisbon and the University of Kentucky, enabling me to cultivate my network of collaborators. This action will provide me a unique opportunity to further my training in evolutionary biology.

I will notably acquire novel skills, expanding my expertise in field and experimental work, and in bioinformatic method development, crucial for my development as an independent researcher.

GENESIS will make a bridge between empirical and theoretical evolutionary biology to tackle fundamental questions in adaptation and speciation, with direct implications to ecology and conservation fields, and transferable to address agriculture and global change challenges.