O Prof. Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca convida toda a comunidade do NUPEM para aula inaugural do PPG-CiAC a ser proferida pelo Prof Dr.Martin Plath do Department of Ecology & Evolution J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. O título da conferência será "Adaptation and speciation along ecological gradients in poeciliid fishes". A Profa. Ana Petry, responsável pela vinda do Professor Alemão esclarece que este pesquisador permanecerá no NUPEM após a conferência para trabalho de colaboração.

Contamos com a presença de todos.

Adaptation and speciation along ecological gradients in poeciliid fishes

Martin Plath

J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main

Department of Ecology & Evolution

Abstract

Extreme environmental conditions (like permanent darkness, hypersalinity, or presence of toxic substances) often form complex selective gradients that have the potential to not only drive local adaptation but also the emergence of reproductive isolation between different locally adapted ecotypes. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), for example, is a potent respiratory toxicant that is lethal to most metazoans (including fishes) in micromolar concentrations, as demonstrated by mass kills following environmental spills. Nevertheless, a number of teleosts have adapted to, and thrive in habitats with high ambient H2S concentrations as found, for example, at marine hydrothermal vents ('black smokers'), cold seeps, or in freshwater sulfide springs. Livebearing fishes (Poeciliidae) dominate amongst sulfide spring inhabiting freshwater fishes in the New World and are the most studied group of sulfide-dwellers. I will identify targets of directional selection in sulfidic habitats and demonstrate how these affect different levels of biological organization (e.g., cellular functioning and molecular evolution, morphology and organ evolution, whole body performance and eco-physiological traits, life histories). I will highlight multifarious selective regimes arising from correlated abiotic stressors (like hypoxia) and altered ecological parameters (like truncated ecological communities and altered predatory regimes). Finally, I will discuss the evidence for replicated ecological speciation as a result of independent evolutionary transitions in different lineages of poeciliids into sulfide waters, and will summarize studies examining the question of how local adaptation translates into the emergence of reproductive isolation due to selection against non-adapted individuals migrating between habitat types.