SES Guest Seminar - Dr. Sarah Crawford

Dr. Sarah Crawford, a University of Guelph Alumnus, from the Department of Evolutionary Ecology and Environmental Toxicology, Institute for Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Faculty of Biological Science, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main will give a presentation on "Evolutionary Toxicology: Using daphnia from the past to understand future impacts of environmental stressors". 

Long-term exposure to environmental contaminants can cause genetic adaptations in populations of aquatic organisms. Evolutionary toxicology and resurrection ecology offer powerful tools for the investigation of changes in sensitivities and adaptive trajectories of populations exposed to contaminants and environmental stressors over decades to centuries. Dormant resting eggs produced by Daphnia species as a result of unfavourable environmental conditions are archived in sediments and can be dated and hatched to produce clonal lineages (i.e., same genotypes) of historical populations. However, these tools have not previously been used to examine impacts from environmental contaminants, particularly in combination with the changes in temperature that are expected to occur with future climate change scenarios. Our research examines how genotypes of clonal lineages of Daphnia species from single populations, separated through generations of evolution, differ in their response to exposure of environmental stressors. The genomic analysis of tolerant and non-tolerant Daphnia populations helps to elucidate the micro-evolutionary adaptations of genes in response to changing environments, providing further insight into the mechanisms of stress tolerance and adaptation.