Natural Selection, Adaptation and Speciation
Research in the lab focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on the evolutionary processes driving and constraining the formation of new species (speciation). In particular, I am interested in the role of adaptation to new ecological environments, via natural selection, in the speciation process. How does divergent natural selection affect which stage of the often continuous process of speciation is achieved? Related interests concern the impact of natural selection on genomic divergence, predator-prey interactions, and macro-evolutionary patterns of character evolution.
Species and ecotypes of Timema walking-stick insects (most photos by C.P. Sandoval)
Various data are used to address these topics, including field observations, manipulative field experiments, laboratory experiments, and molecular data from both genotypic and DNA-sequence data. The molecular work spans a range of sub-disciplines including evolutionary genetics, population genetics, population genomics, and phylogenetics. I also aim to combine and integrate these empirical studies with theoretical work and comparative analyses. My own research has focused on host-plant adaptation and speciation of herbivorous insects (particularly Timema walking-stick insects in California), although I have also worked with freshwater stickleback fishes and am interested in exploring other systems.
Diagrammatic depiction of the often continuous nature of speciation
Keywords: evolutionary biology, relationship between adaptation and speciation, ecological genetics, insect-plant interactions