Evolutionary genetics of energetic performance

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I am generally interested in the evolutionary impacts of environmental heterogeneity and specifically the evolution of physiological strategies in variable environments. I use existing quantitative genetic and optimality models to develop predictions that I can test in natural and experimentally evolved populations. In the past, I modeled variation in air temperature to estimate the selective advantage of developmental plasticity in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster and tested the prediction that coarse-grained variation favors increased plasticity during development (Cooper et al. 2010, J Evol Biol; Cooper et al. 2012, J. Therm. Biol.). More recently, using 15 experimentally evolved populations of D. melanogaster (generated by Sam Yeaman and Michael Whitlock) I have been evaluating the evolution of cellular plasticity (Cooper et al. 2012, Evolution; Hammad, Cooper et al. 2011, RCMS). This work has shown that thermal environments that vary greatly among generations favor increased plasticity of membrane composition. This cellular response enables the maintenance of organismal performance (e.g., fecundity, Condon, Cooper et al. in prep) in variable environments.  I’m currently identifying the alleles that enable such a response.

I am also evaluating natural populations of D. melanogaster from different fermentation habitats (e.g., wineries and orchards). This work is in progress and will hopefully shed light on mechanisms of pleiotropy while evaluating divergence among natural populations.

I have also been working on some molecular population genetic problems with collaborators in EEB and Informatics. Together, we are asking questions about how selection acts across the mitochondrial genomes of D. melanogaster. We have completed our analyses and the results of this work should be available in the near future.

Curriculum vitae (pdf)