Plant Genomics and evolutionary ecology of plant-herbivore interactions
Evolution of plant defenses and local adaptation
Research interests
Overall, I am interested in studying how plants are adapted to their local abiotic and biotic conditions and the genomic basis of local adaptation. How natural selection operates in the genome and shapes the phenotypes? To this end, I used tools from genomics, including genome assembly, comparative genomics, population genomics, gene family analyses, and ecology and evolution. Also, I am particularly interested in elucidating how plants defend themselves against their herbivores.
Local adaptation
Quantitative genetics and genomics
Combining traditional tools such as greenhouse experiments; common garden experiments, field work, reciprocal transplant experiments and modern tools such as mass spectometry (HPLC-TOF-MS), QTL mapping, Identity by descent analyses, genome-wide association studies, pop genomics, gene orthology/gene family analyses to elucidate how natural selection is operating in the genome and shaping the genomic and phenotypic composition of the populations, specially shaping plant-insect interactions.
Chemical ecology of plant-herbivore interactions
Coevolution between plant and herbivores, evolution of plant chemical defenses, geographic mosaic theory of coevolution, phenotypic selection on plant defensive traits. To this end we used genomics and mass spectometry along with experiments in nature and controled conditions.