Evolutionary Biology

In this course we will consider phenotypic evolution in natural populations, and how this is influenced by different types of selection, neutral drift, genetics and development. Students will learn how adaptive change is studied in different contexts and with a variety of methods.  The course will also introduce students to primary scientific literature, as well as critically assess and design research intended to address evolutionary questions. The aim of the course is for students to begin thinking as evolutionary biologists.

The course is taught in English, reflecting its role as the working language of science.

Sexual reproduction is the most common mode of reproduction in nature, however, its existence is one of the biggest problems in evolutionary biology. Why did sexual reproduction, a costly form of reproduction, evolve and why is it maintained? What led to the evolution of the two specialized groups ‘males’ and ‘females’? How does sex and the existence of sexes affect evolution at the genetic and genome level? In this seminar, based on classical and recent literature, we discuss these topics from the fundamental theory to recent genomic insights.

• The seminar takes place every Thursday 17:00 - 18:30
• Each week two people will give a short presentation on the topics to be discussed that week.
• The presentations are followed by a group discussion on one or two papers.
• The topics that will be discussed are:
• The many costs of sexual reproduction
• Benefits of recombination
• Benefits of sexually produced variation
• Evolution of sexual asymmetries: mating types
• Evolution of sexual asymmetries: anisogamy
• Evolution of sexual asymmetries: separate sexes
• Diversity of sex determination systems
• Environmental sex determination
• Sex chromosome evolution
• Sex chromosome turnover
• Sexual selection and sex chromosomes
• Sexes and “sex roles”