April 23, 2025

12:00pm – 1:00pm Terasaki Life Science Building 1100 (TLSB 1100)

Dr. Megan Barkdull
The Natural History Museum

" One Genome, Many Phenotypes: Evolutionary Insights from Complex Traits in Ants "

Plasticity, where multiple phenotypes are produced by a single genome, has important
consequences for the evolution of biodiversity, but the mechanisms that allow new plastic traits to
evolve are unclear. Using comparative genomics, developmental transcriptomics, and
phylostratigraphy, I explore both the causes and consequences of worker morph plasticity in the
turtle ants (genus Cephalotes). Worker plasticity appears to constrain positive selection across the
genome, and likely evolves via selection on gene regulatory mechanisms and via the rewiring of
evolutionarily ancient genes

Host: Felipe Zapata