Research Interest
We are interested in evolution from a basic demographic perspective, how ecology and neutral and adaptive processes shape populations and disease dynamics in stochastic environments. We aim at understanding the evolution and maintenance of heterogeneity amon individuals, how it drives pathogen, ecological and evolutionary dynamics.
We address these questions by developing structured models and thereby link theoretical biology, quantitative genetics, population genetics, life history theory, and population dynamics. These models are tested by with empirical data that span in level of control, from highly controlled bacteria microfluidic systems to data collected on natural populations.
We aim to bridge the gap between empirical and theoretical approaches within and across fields.
Current research
We work on age-stage structured population models to link individual level demographic data to population level dynamics. We ask how individual dynamics have evolved and are maintained, how trade-offs at the individual level can be evaluated, and investigate how stochastic processes at different levels of biological organization buffer or enhance each other to drive evolutionary and population dynamics.
We explore underlying evolutionary mechanisms of how noisy gene expression relates to demographic fates of individual bacteria and population dynamics.
We explore how isogenic bacteria respond differently to strong selective forces such as exposure to antibiotics. Heterogeneity in phenotypic resistance might be an important evolutionary stepping stone to fixed genetic resistance.
We study aging and senescence in bacteria using a highly automated microfluidic system in order to bridge the gap between single cell transcription and protein expression dynamics, the demographic fates of individual cells and the evolutionary consequences at the population level. We detect classical senescence patterns of progeny born early in the life of a cell (early daughters), whereas late daughters do not show senescence and are born at an older biological age. Our results suggest stochastic patterns of damage accumulation within and stochastic transmission across generations, with asymmetry within and among cells playing a central role for senescence.
We investigate influences of stochastic events such as hurricanes as well as population density on stage dynamics and the diversity of life histories. For this question we use longitudinal data on macaques from Cayo Santiago. This work is in collaboration with Raisa Hernandez-Pacheco, USULB.
Our interest on the evolution of neutral and adaptive processes in variable environments also captures work on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity, mainly related to cryptic genetic variation and whether plasticity is adaptive.