Variação: Desenvolvimento e Selecção

Interesse da Investigação

My research in the area of evolutionary developmental biology is focused on the genetic and developmental dissection of phenotypic variation. Heritable phenotypic variation is the raw material of evolution by natural selection, and a universal property of biological systems - including traits of medical and economic importance. Understanding the mechanisms that generate phenotypic variation is, thus, a key challenge in contemporary biological research. What are the gene types (e.g. transcription factors versus enzymes), specific genes, and gene regions (e.g. regulatory versus coding sequence) that contribute to evolutionarily relevant variation? How do these genes lead to change developmental programmes and translate into variant adult phenotypes?

My work so far has concentrated on a diverse and ecologically-relevant phenotype that represents a laboratory-tractable system for the dissection of variation in complex traits: wing color patterns on butterfly wings.

Membros do Grupo

Inês Conceição	Postdoc
	Tel: 21 446 4532
Roberto Keller	Postdoc
	Tel: 21 446 4611
Ana Rita Mateus	External Ph.D. Student
	Tel: 21 446 4609
Ana Marcelino	External Masters Student
	Tel: 21 440 7900
Maria Adelina Jerónimo	Research Technician
	Tel: 21 446 4609

Projecto de Investigação

Evolutionary diversification: genetic basis and adaptive significance of variation in butterfly wing patterns

Morphological diversity is the result of the reciprocal interactions between the developmental processes that translate genotype into phenotype and produce adult morphologies, and the evolutionary forces that weigh in the ecological significance of alternative phenotypes and determine their frequency. This project integrates the study of the genetic basis of variation in eyespot size (gene mapping and expression-profiling approaches), with an analysis of fitness differences between phenotypic variants (mate choice experiments). These approaches will be used on different lab populations and integrated with ongoing analysis of different natural populations of B. anynana and other Bicyclus species to compare intra- and inter-specific variation determined by genetic and environmental factors.

Funding

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) Project Grant, Portugal

Colaboradores

University of California at Irvine
Tony Long, Link

University of Leiden
Paul Brakefield, Link

Publicações

(Six selected publications) Updated March (2009).

Beldade, P., SV Saenko, N Pul & AD Long (2009). A gene-based linkage map for Bicyclus anynana butterflies allows for a comphenesive analysis of synteny with the lepidopteran reference genome PLoS Genetics 5 :e1000366 Link

Saenko SV, V French, PM Brakefield & Beldade, P. (2008). Conserved developmental processes and the formation of evolutionary novelties: examples from butterfly wings Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363 :1549–1555 Link

Beldade, P., Rudd, S., Gruber, J.D. & Long, A.D. (2006). An Expression Sequence Tag resource for Bicyclus anynana butterflies, an evo-devo model BMC Genomics 7 :130 Link

Beldade P, Brakefield, P.M. & Long, A.D. (2002). Contribution of Distal-less to quantitative variation in butterfly eyespots Nature 415 :315-318 Link

Beldade, P., Koops, K. & Brakefield, P.M. (2002). Developmental constraints versus flexibility in morphological evolution Nature 416 :844-847 Link

Beldade, P. & Brakefield, P.M. (2002). Genetics and evo-devo of butterfly wing patterns Nature Reviews Genetics 3 :442-452 Link