Genomics of frog colouration and the role of sexual and natural selection in speciation

This project will make use of genomic and transcriptomic data to study demography, population differentiation, and the genomic basis of colouration and colour perception in multiple cryptic and aposematic strawberry poison frog populations. Research questions include:

What is the genomic basis of crypsis and aposematism? Is colouration determined by a few loci or does it require changes in many genes? The genomics of colouration will determine the complexity of switching between predator avoidance strategies.

What are the underlying changes in gene expression involved in generating colour polymorphism within the different strategies? How is the colour perceived and processed?

Does population history/demography play a role in the predator avoidance strategy? Previous studies suggest that the variation in colouration among populations have occurred through repeated loss of aposematism. Could this loss be associated with population bottlenecks? Drift (particularly if colouration is based on few loci) or negative selection in small populations where educating predators to avoid aposematic prey is not successful could be the driving forces.

The project relies on a comprehensive transcriptomic dataset of several frog tissues, including skin, liver, eye and brain and low-coverage genomic data. It will be conducted in collaboration with researchers in the UK, Sweden, USA, and Germany.