Our research in the area of Ecology and Evolution aims to address several important questions and uses a host of approaches and techniques to achieve this. Most labs use multidisciplinary approaches spanning several areas such as molecular techniques, quantitative methods, GIS, laboratory experimentation on organism development and physiology, population dynamics, genetic analyses as well as satellite imagery.
Evolutionary Genetics, Genomics, and Sex Chromosomes The Evans lab studies how natural selection, recombination, and demography influence genome evolution. One of the major themes of our work is to study speciation and gene duplication in African clawed frogs. This work aims to further understanding of the extent and mechanisms of biological diversification in this group, and to explore interesting genomic phenomena such as the evolution of sex chromosomes and transposable elements. Another focus of our efforts relates to the role of social systems on genome evolution. This work involves simulations of genome evolution under various social systems, and analysis of molecular polymorphisms from sex chromosomes, autosomal DNA, and mitochondrial DNA of cercopithecine monkeys.
Bioinformatics & Functional Genomics; Ecology & Evolution
