Sexual conflict in moths, NERC GW4+ DTP, PhD in Biosciences studentship

Location: University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP). The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners: British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

Project details

Project Background

The genome of an organism is characterized by intense conflict. Males and females share a genome and express many shared phenotypic traits, which are often selected in opposite directions. Intra-locus sexual conflict is the situation where genes that are good for males are bad when expressed in females and vice versa – also termed sexually antagonistic alleles. Sexual conflict also promotes wider genomic conflicts and can directly affect evolution of gene expression patterns. Recent research has revealed most genes are differentially expressed in male and female metazoans, indicating many loci are sexually antagonistic. In the Indian meal moth Plodia interpunctella, there is strong intra-locus sexual conflict for shared life-history traits. Despite this, sexual dimorphism has evolved in the traits examined suggesting that mechanism(s) have evolved to ameliorate this conflict and allow the sexes to reach their life-history optima. Various mechanisms can facilitate this process, including sex-biased gene expression and sex-linkage. Sexual conflict is predicted to promote differential gene expression and sex-limited expression to resolve the harmful effects of sexually antagonistic alleles.

Project Aims and Methods

This project will examine the impact of sexual conflict for variation in gene expression patterns by making use of existing long-established replicate experimental evolution populations of the Indian meal moth in combination with next generation sequencing to determine transcriptome variation in males and females with different evolutionary history showing strong sexual antagonism over shared life history traits. This will allow detailed quantification of the impact of sexually antagonistic selection on the evolutionary responses at the phenotypic and underlying transcriptomic level.

This research has the potential to enhance our understanding of the impact of sexual conflict at the molecular, individual and population levels by evaluating its potency to shape the gene expression patterns of male and female moth evolving under different levels of sexual conflict.

This project will provide a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the mechanisms and fitness consequences of sexual conflict. By linking changes at the phenotypic level with genetic changes, we will be able to reveal the form, strength, and target of selection at the genomic level.

The student will gain skills and be trained in (1) insect reproductive biology, (2) molecular techniques, (3) gene expression analyses, (4) bio-informatics, (5) experimental evolution, and (6) fitness and behavioural assays.

Training
The project will examine in impact of sexual conflict at the molecular, individual and population levels. The aim is to evaluate the potency of sexual conflict to shape the gene expression patterns of male and female moth evolving under different levels of sexual conflict and to quantify the resulting sex-specific phenotypic effects. This will allow us to unravel the link between genotype and phenotype by using a combination of experimental evolution, fitness assays and genomic approaches. This includes RT-QPCR to quantify variation in gene expression in different tissues, in addition to a variety of fitness assays, experimental evolution and sophisticated statistical approaches and bioinformatics – this project is truly interdisciplinary as it links phenotype and phenotypic approaches to genotype and genetic approaches.