The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not thinking at all.

My Ph.D. research was focused on the evolution of reproductive and stress tolerance traits in the laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster that were selected for adaptation to a crowded developmental environment. In the broadest sense, I tried to understand how the limitation of resources, exposure to a toxic environment, and intense competition during developmental stages (hallmarks of crowding) affect the evolution of adult fitness traits. I  used eight large outbred laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster in my experiments, four of which were experimentally selected for adaptation to larval crowding for more than 250 generations. In contrast, the other four populations are non-larval crowded control populations. I looked into the evolution of reproductive traits like investment in reproductive tissues, sperm competition, sexual-conflict levels, and re-mating frequencies in these populations.  To investigate the evolution of the stress-tolerance ability of these populations, I have looked at the immune response and heat-stress tolerance ability of adults. The findings of these studies have given an insight into the utterly unexplored territory of the evolution of these traits in populations adapted to the stressful developmental environment.

Currently, during my postdoc, I am trying to understand the influence of sex on genome evolution. Caenorhabditis elegans is an excellent model system to answer this question, as we can easily manipulate their mating behavior. I am using experimental evolution to study how genomic and phenotypic evolution is affected by the change in mating systems. My other active research interests include the evolution of immune response and change in gut microbiota due to adaptation to a stressful environment. I am currently working on some grants to build an elaborate research project around these topics to study genomic and phenotypic evolution in the lab. If you work in/around the same area of research, please feel free to get in touch with me for some potential collaborations.