Dr Luke Holman

Individuals of the same species often show variation in phenotype, as with males and females, queens and workers, or different age classes. Such variation has consequences for adaptive evolution which may shed light on many of evolutionary biology’s big questions, e.g. the maintenance of genetic variation, and the origins of sexual reproduction, ageing, and eusociality. In this talk, I will discuss two different research projects. The first project searches for alleles and RNA transcripts that are associated with fitness in Drosophila, and tests whether these associations are consistent between males and females, and between young and old individuals. The results shed light on the extent to which natural and sexual selection are aligned versus opposing, and on competing theories of ageing. The second project focuses on the queen-worker polymorphism found in female honeybees, and specifically on the proximate mechanisms that produce it. By experimentally inducing young bee larvae to develop into queens or workers, coupled with methylome and transcriptome sequencing, the project tests the controversial hypothesis that queen and worker DNA is differentially methylated, resulting in differential gene expression and phenotypic differentiation.