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RESEARCH AREA : agro-ecology, conservation biology, evolutionary biology, kin selection, plant demography, life-history traits, population genetics

Having joined INRAE in 2014, I develop projects in the field of agroecology by applying concepts from evolutionary biology to address questions linked to the developement of more sustainable agriculture. Using durum wheat as a model system, I am interested in the mechanisms that drive plant-plant interactions, and the evolution of cooperation in plants within the framework of the kin selection theory. I have been developing projects around two main axes:

(1) varietal mixtures - The cultivation of different genotypes within a field has been proposed as a way to take better advantage of ecological processes naturally occuring in ecosystems, and might allow the development of agrosystems with reduced ennvironmental costs. Using experiments, I investigate whether kin recognition might negatively affect the performance of varietal mixtures in durum wheat by triggering stronger competitive interactions in mixtures;

(2) plant cooperation - Breeding for cooperative phenotypes that do not invest resources in competitive interactions at the expense of seed production when grown at high density could help sparing natural land from conversion to agriculture. I am interested in identifying traits and phenotypes that make a plant cooperative to further test whether cooperation has evolved during crop domestication and breeding, and to define relevant selection schemes that promote cooperation in crops.

Before joining INRA, my research focused on the effects of environmental variations on life-history evolution, population structure and population dynamics, with a special emphasis on ecological and biological correlates of endemism and extinction. To that aim, I used tools of population biology (mostly demography and population genetics) applied at both intra- and interspecific levels.