EEB Thursday Seminar Understanding diversification through development: case studies of Drosophila reproduction and monarch butterfly migration

Consideration of trait development can advance studies into the genetic basis of phenotypic variation and illuminate mechanisms that promote or constrain biodiversity. I will overview my work on two different instances of using development to understand phenotypic evolution: ovariole number in Drosophila and migration in the monarch butterfly. I found that developmental complexity has influenced ovariole number diversification and that the same developmental pathway can link both phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary diversification of ovariole number in Drosophila lineages. More recently, I have been working towards establishing the monarch butterfly as a model to study the molecular genetic ‘design’ of migration and how this influences the evolution of the migration strategy. I will describe experiments in which we leverage natural variation in migration capability to take a comparative developmental approach to identify the genetic and environmental basis of monarch migration.