Trial lecture: 'Approaches for demonstrating local adaptation'
Time and place: May 31, 2024 10:15 AM, Nucleus, Bikuben, Kristine Bonnevies hus
Main research findings:
In my PhD project, which was conducted as part of The Nansen Legacy, I leveraged next-generation sequencing technologies to explore the evolutionary histories of keystone Arctic marine fish species. By analyzing genome assemblies in a comparative framework, we found that large-scale chromosomal rearrangement events can arise among closely related species, over a relatively short evolutionary time. Moreover, such rearrangements may possibly underpin evolutionary functions such as adaptation to environmental conditions as well as initiation and maintenance of genetic barriers between species pairs.
Furthermore, population genomic analyses of polar cod and capelin across the Barents Sea and adjacent regions revealed contrasting results. For polar cod, we found no apparent population structuring at the genome-wide level. However, we discovered 20 polymorphic chromosomal inversions, that vary in size and complexity, which encompass hundreds of genes, suggesting the potential existence of subpopulations or ecotypes. For capelin, the genomic data uncovered structuring, delineating three main clusters defined both by genome-wide markers and inversions, representing local Icelandic, Barents Sea, and East Greenland populations.
Taken together, our results shed light on the evolutionary history and diversity as well as population structure, and connectivity of keystone teleosts in the Arctic and subarctic regions of the North Atlantic.
Adjudication committee
Prof. Craig Primmer, Institute of Biotechnology & Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki
Ass. Prof. Josefin Stiller, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen
Prof. John Michael Koomey, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo
Chair of defense
Professor Melinka Butenko, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo
Supervisors
Researcher Sissel Jentoft, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo
Researcher Leif Christian Stige, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo
Assoc. Prof. Mark Ravinet, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo
Prof. Kim Præbel, The Norwegian College of Fishery Science, UiT
Researcher Joël Durant, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo