EVOGENE Seminar: Mark Ravinet

The evolution of commensalism in Passer sparrows

Human activity has altered the evolutionary trajectories and ecological circumstances of nearly every species on Earth. What can this tell us about the processes of adaptation and speciation? Can we take advantage of the human impacts on species as means to study evolution and its intersection with ecology? This is the driving aim of my research group, where we use Passer sparrows as a model system. We are focusing on a number of topics including understanding the evolutionary causes and consequences of human-commensalism, repeated adaptation to environmental changes in introduced populations and convergent adaptation to human environments across all bird species. We do this using a multidisciplinary approach including genomics, phylogenetics and ecological analyses.