Title: “The genomics of the clownfish adaptive radiation”.
Aim: to investigate the comparative genomics of clownfishes and damselfishes by developing new approaches to link phenotypic traits with large scale genomic data.
Summary of the project: The project objectives are the analyses of newly acquired full-genome sequencing data for the clownfishes and damselfishes. The goal is to better understand the mechanisms driving the evolution of color in these groups of fishes and to link genomic signature of adaptation with extended phenotypic data based on color patterns and morphometrics.
The work will combine computational methods to analyse genomic and phenotypic traits from samples available in the lab, but will also include some field work to extend the data available. The project is thus multidisciplinary and will give the opportunity to gain experience both in the biological question related to speciation genomics and the development and use of state-of-the-art computational tools to answer such questions.
Our research group has a longstanding research track in comparative genomics in clownfishes and has been developing new approaches to analyses phenotypic and genomic data. The position will fit in the on-going research effort to characterize the genomics of adaptation in clownfishes.