Species that uniparentially reproduce to some degree (either through self-fertilisation or clonal reproduction) are more likely to establish themselves in remote areas, including islands. However, the reproductive mode also affects how prevalent deleterious mutations are in a species’ genome; it can either reduce them so populations are more likely to persist, or enhance them due to relaxed selection, leading to lowered fitness. Introduced populations are also likely to go through a population bottleneck, which can further alter the prevalence of deleterious mutations. It is unclear how the mating system and population history interact to influence the long-term fitness of new populations, especially with regards to their deleterious mutation prevalence.
Mimulus guttatus (yellow monkeyflower) was introduced into the UK in the 1800s from Western North America, and is currently widespread throughout the British Isles. Introduced populations exhibit large variation in reproductive modes, ranging from highly clonal to highly sexual, and arise from several source populations. Hence, it is an exciting model system for investigating how the reproductive modes, population history, and deleterious mutation prevalence interact to influence the establishment of introduced species.
The goal of this project will be to analyse genome data from Mimulus guttatus to quantify both the extent of self-fertilisation and clonal reproduction in natural populations in the UK, and the deleterious mutation load. The student can also organise fieldwork to perform additional sampling. These data will then be analysed to determine how the mating system and population history jointly affect mutation load, with these values being compared to US populations to establish whether the mutation load has changed upon its establishment into the UK. There will also be scope to develop theoretical simulations to determine how all these factors interact, or also explore how populations adapt to their environments. The project will provide the student with a comprehensive range of genomic, bioinformatic and field skills that are important for biological research.
https://matthartfield.wordpress.com/
https://twyford.bio.ed.ac.uk/
https://plant-evolution.org
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