Biology professor discloses evolution findings – UTA The Shorthorn

In the Life Science Building, Martin Turcotte, University of Pittsburgh evolutionary ecology assistant professor, explained how many contemporary theories and literature focus on ecology affecting evolution or evolution affecting ecology. Turcotte has set out to prove that both affect each other reciprocally instead of independently.

This research can have a financial impact on the farming industry as well as implications throughout other scientific fields.

Turcotte focuses on evolution in a smaller period of time, which is much less focused on by the scientific community. He defines these shorter time periods as 12 generations of organisms or less.

There are several examples of rapid evolution that many long-term evolution-based models dont effectively explain, he said. For 100 years, the Atlantic Cod became much smaller in size because of fishing. Rapid evolution can happen outside of human interaction, such as the lynx population and evolution in America changing between 1850 and 1950 based on hare population.

Turcotte tried to answer three questions with his research: Does rapid evolution drive population dynamics in nature?, Do ecological and evolutionary processes influence each other? and How does rapid evolution affect species interaction?

Turcotte answered his first question by using an insect called the green peach aphid. This creature is a sap-sucking parasite that feeds on more than 130 types of plants.

The green peach aphid reproduces both clonally and sexually over a short time, making it ideal for testing evolutionary change in an experiment, he said.

He put 20 cloned aphids on one plant versus 10 aphids from one clone group and 10 from another.

I spent a whole summer in 100-degree weather lifting leaves and clicking a clicker, he said.

In the first experiment, Turcotte found the mixed group of aphids evolved about 35 percent faster than those that cloned themselves.

This result changed when he put bags over the plants, eliminating outside factors. In this experiment, both groups evolved at the same rate.

What Turcotte hypothesized was some herbivore ate part of the plant, causing a higher population density. Under these conditions, he predicted the mixed group would fare better than the single clone group.

His findings seemed to prove this in both caged experiments and experiments in greenhouses, he said.

These findings also answered his second question as a smaller plant affected evolution.

For his third question, he set up an experiment in a greenhouse. He tested evolution for 20 aphids in one clone group versus 60 in another group. He found the group of 60 evolved faster because of increased competition due to population density.

Turcotte also found different clone groups become dominant based on certain conditions. On a farm-raised crop, a certain group may be dominant while another group may be dominant on the wild counterpart of that plant.

Biology senior Nafi Dewan attended the colloquium for his class and explained the class gets visits from weekly speakers from different parts of America. He is intrigued by the different research that speakers are doing and how they are applying their findings.

Biology graduate student Asad Rizwan also attends the event for one of his classes. He now has a better understanding of his classes and how the content he learned in class is applied to the field.

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