Welcome to the Evolutionary Biology Laboratory at IISER Mohali!

 

In promiscuous species, the correlation for fitness between males and females is less than one. Thus, males and females can potentially evolve traits that increase their own Darwinian fitness but harm the fitness of the other sex. This leads to open ended cycles of adaptation and counter adaptation- a form of intra-species Red Queen process- often called Intersexual Conflict. Such antagonistic co-evolution between the sexes has been suggested to drive rapid divergence between populations in their life-history and behavior and act as an engine of speciation. The long term goal of our lab is to understand the interplay between sexual conflict, sexual selection and life-history evolution. Specifically, we are working on (a) Sexual conflict and Sexual Selection, (b) Evolutionary Ecology of immunity and (c) Life-History Evolution. We use Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. Our approaches include Experimental Evolution, Phenotypic manipulations as well as gene expression and molecular techniques. Our techniques allow us to follow the process of adaptive evolution in real time across replicate populations. More importantly , we can assess fitness and related traits under conditions that are meaningful to the populations. Click here to learn more about our research.