UPDATE: THIS TALK HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED (SEE BELOW)

Roberto Marquez

graduate student in Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago

“How and Why Did Phyllobates Frogs Get Yellow?”

Wednesday, MAY 18

12pm

Biopsychological Sciences Building (BPSB) Room 122

ABSTRACT:

Coloration is involved in almost every aspect of an animal’s biology, from thermoregulation and vitamin fixation to predator-prey interactions and sexual selection. This has generated a seemingly endless array of dynamically-evolvig coloration phenotypes across the tree of animals. Poison frogs of the family Dendrobatidae exhibit wide variation in coloration. Within this group, bright colorations have evolved independently at least five times, and are known to be involved in predator avoidance, sexual selection, and territoriality. To understand the mechanisms behind the evolution of conspicuous coloration, I study the genus Phyllobates, where plain bright-yellow species have evolved independently two or three times from dark ancestors with yellow dorsal stripes. In this seminar, I combine results from comparative phylogenetics and field experiments to elucidate the role of predation pressures on the evolution of coloration in this group of frogs, and explore the genetic mechanisms behind this process based on preliminary exome sequencing results.