Evolutionary Biologist

Julian Dupuis Class of 2004

“It took me several years and a few degrees to realize it, but Science Olympiad was my first opportunity to experience how science often works in the real world: You’re plunged into new fields and challenges with students who were often not in the same group as yourself. You’ve got a set deadline, and have to work together in building, solving problems, and doing and applying the (often only tangential) learning that you all bring to the table from your different courses. When it comes to competition day, sometimes your preparation and planning work out, and sometimes it’s back to the drawing board! New challenges and productive collaboration are foundations of exciting science and research, and Science Olympiad gives students a great primer to that world.”

-Julian Dupuis, Class of 2004

Julian Dupuis, PhD candidate, from the Sperling Lab, 2016

Hybridization is increasingly recognized as a complex evolutionary phenomenon that can facilitate and inhibit speciation in multiple ways. This complexity creates methodological difficulty for species delimitation, but also sheds new light on how we view biodiversity and speciation in general. My research interests focus broadly on evolutionary biology, speciation, and hybridization, and I use a combination of phylogenetic, population genetic, and genomic tools to investigate the evolutionary histories of primarily insect groups.

My PhD research focuses on hybridization in the Papilio machaon species group of swallowtail butterflies, at large and small geographic scales. Hybridization is widespread in this group, and several lineages across North America are thought to be of hybrid origin (Dupuis & Sperling 2015). These lineages share intriguing genetic similarities (particularly identical mitochondrial DNA haplotypes, despite thousands of kilometers of geographic separation), but are also genomically distinct to varying degrees. Current and ongoing research explores the genomic characteristics of these lineages with respect to their hybrid origins and phylogeography. At a finer scale, my PhD research investigates how characteristics of the landscape influence dispersal and population structure, and facilitate or inhibit hybridization between Papilio machaon and P. zelicaon in western Canada. This research combines spatial ecology and population genetic methods into a landscape genetics approach.

I’m also involved in ongoing projects on various butterfly groups (metalmarks, theApodemia mormo species group; tiger swallowtails, the Papilio glaucus species group; and the swallowtail butterflies as a whole, family Papilionidae), moths (spruce budworm, Choristoneura spp.), as well as other insect groups (hump-backed grigs,Cyphoderris spp.).

Prior to starting my M.Sc. at the University of Alberta, I earned a B.Sc. in biology and chemistry at Northern Michigan University. During my Bachelors I conducted research on the population genetics of the common loon (Gavia immer), which included identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms and applying a novel restriction digestion and polymerase chain reaction technique to genotype birds for cost-effective population-based analysis. During the summers of my Bachelors, I worked as an aquatic ecologist and fisheries biologist for the United States Forest Service and the National Park Service.

Publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julian_Dupuis

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