By Dr Kathryn Elmer is a Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and was part of the 2014 cohort of Cruciblists.
Kathryn’s research interests include speciation, adaptive radiation, ecological genomics, phenotypic plasticity, ecological adaptation, ichthyology, herpetology, and adaptation to environmental change.
Current projects
Adaptation genomics of trophic polymorphism
A great challenge of evolutionary biology is that many processes occur on long timescales and are difficult to study or replicate. Therefore, Kathryn is especially fascinated by parallel evolution, or the repeated evolution of phenotypically similar species in spatially isolated but similar environments. In those cases, she can use these ‘natural experiments’ to dissect the ecological, phenotypic, and genetic mechanisms and responses in diversification (see Elmer & Meyer (2011) Adaptation in the age of ecological genomics: insights from parallelism and convergence. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 26, 298–306). Using adaptive radiations of northern freshwater fishes as a model system, this project aims to:
- Determine differential gene expression associated with rapidly evolving and phenotypically plastic trophic polymorphisms induced in the lab;
- Quantify genetic variation that responded to selection during the divergence of trophically polymorphic species, and then to identify the arrangement of this variation across the genome.
Speciation in megadiverse groups
Species rich groups provide a good system to test demography and environment in speciation because there are numerous lineages to assess as replicates. For example, the forests on the slopes of the Andes mountains are a famous but poorly understood ‘biodiversity hotspot’. Kathryn have inferred evolutionary histories of morphological stasis despite deep genetic divergence (cryptic species) in species complexes of frogs and salamanders. Her research challenges a prevailing hypothesis that this region’s species richness was generated by historical Pleistocene climate change. Instead, she found that species branching was much older and may instead have been promoted by ancient landscape changes.
Parallel evolution in cichlid fishes
To investigate natural selection and genetic patterns in the origins of species, Kathryn studied a parallel adaptive radiation of cichlid fishes found in sympatry and allopatry in depauperate habitats: recently formed crater lakes. This research found that parallelism of body shape across populations, non-parallel genetic patterns in signals of selection, and extremely rapid sympatric diversification.
For more information on Kathryn, see her webpage at the University of Glasgow.