EEB Thursday Seminar Series - A Geogenomic perspective: how Earth processes shape biological evolution and speciation

Changes in Earth’s surface and climate exert a fundamental control on the adaptation, evolution, and divergence of species inhabiting that surface. Through the emerging field of geogenomics, which aims to deeply integrate geological and genomic sciences, my group works to detail and model the mechanisms of this relationship to understand what types of Earth processes are impactful for evolution, amongst which species, and why. I will present examples using sea level change and fishes, rivers and monsoon adaptation in desert tortoises, and tectonic/paleoenvironmental changes shaping evolutionary genomic patterns of lizards, rodents, and plants on the Baja California peninsula. These examples will reveal a new set of questions emerging from geogenomics, along with potential new tools for quantifying these relationships.