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The social environment often has an important impact on fitness and generates a form of selection called ‘social selection’. Social selection should favor traits that make you succeed in social interactions throughout the year, yet such traits have received limited empirical attention. In particular

Global changes are causing deep modifications of ecosystems and their functioning, leading directly to species extinctions and functional shifts and indirectly to alterations of the ecosystem services they deliver. In the last decades, modelling the impact of global changes on biodiversity and ecosy

Objective 1. Contribute to the census of SO microbial life, describing their diversity from taxonomy to population genome levels using molecular approaches. Objective 2. Understand the ecological structure and biogeography of polar marine microbes; define core communities across major SO ecosystems

This ambitious project should allow, for the first time, to have access to the hidden diversity (extinct or unsampled species) of species that don't leave fossils. The objective is twofold: a better characterization of the real extant of the living world, and better taking into account this hidden d

Marine bivalves are tremendous biological models to study how MNI contribute to building reproductive isolation. Many of these species are characterized by large population sizes, high fecundity and high dispersal abilities, factors that should impede the establishment of local adaptation. Despite t

The overarching goal of DEADENDER is to dissect the process of biological extinction using the Endemic European Artiodactyls (EEA) to investigate the response of related animals to modifications of their environments, and the impact of biotic drivers (intrinsic like diet, body mass, brain complexity

Aims of the project: 1) The first objective is to go further in the study of retrospective mental time travel in both cuttlefish and octopuses, by testing: 1) flexibility of episodic-like memory, a behavioural criterion which has not yet been tested; 2) source memory which has been suggested to a

In coastal regions, seaweed biomass turnover influences ecosystem functions both at local and global scales. It largely relies on specialized bacteria able to breakdown intact algal tissues and release degradation products in the water column. The ALGAVOR project explores the ecological and metaboli

Very little data exists on the existence of emotions in invertebrates. The only data available come from work in insects. This project aims to measure the emotional responses of cuttlefish to different stimuli, of different valences (different types of prey, of different size, accessible or not). Th

In this project we have three main goals: 1) to develop analytical and simulation models exploring how partial selfing affects the evolution of recombination; 2) to perform experimental evolution to measure selection on recombination modifiers under partial selfing; 3) to measure the fitness varianc

The specific goals of the project are: 1. Study, at microscale, carbonate precipitation favoured by specific microbial lineages. We will explore the hypothesis that some cyanobacteria favour aragonite formation by locally increasing Ca2+ concentration and alkalinity. 2. Study at local scale ho

Here, we will use the pea aphid, a well-suited system for adaptive genomics, which conveniently shows a complex of plant-specialized biotypes, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of plant specialization events and to identify genomic regions controlling plant specialization. We have produced a v

In social species, demographic processes (ie, growth, reproduction, migration, survival) are functions of cooperative/competitive interactions among individuals. In cooperative breeders for example, juveniles’ growth and survival depend on stage/age/size-structure transfers of resources from parents

The survival of coral reefs critically depends on the recruitment of new corals. Crustose coralline algae host a diversity of microorganisms that play a role in coral settlement and metamorphosis processes and act as reservoir for the development of the coral’s microbiome during its early life stage

This project studies a unique case of parallel specialization on the same toxic plant, noni (Morinda citrifolia), by two species of Drosophila: Drosophila yakuba in Mayotte and D. sechellia in the Seychelles. These two species are closely related to D. melanogaster, a research model organism whose g

Since the Cambrian, biominerals contribute to the adaptation of living organisms to different environments by fulfilling various functions including support, locomotion, aggression, protection, camouflage, magnetic navigation, mastication, gravity sensor, and vision. These functions are necessarily

We will first assess how both geographic and phylogenetic distance affect the likelihood of HTT between species, using insects as a model taxon. First, the genome of 99 insect species trapped in 11 geographical sites on the planet will be sequenced using Illumina technology. HTT events between these

The impacts of severe drought events on ecosystem functions are far from being understood, as are the mechanisms which underlie functional resilience after the disturbance has passed. This topic is of utmost importance in tropical regions, where climate change models forecast significant changes in

Transposable elements (TEs) are now widely recognized as major contributors to genome evolution, yet the processes governing their accumulation remain elusive. Mating systems are expected to play a central role, but the net effect of the shift from outcrossing to selfing, which occurs commonly in pl

Humans exert a growing influence over climate characterized by rising temperatures and associated regional changes in weather patterns affecting the quantity and timing of precipitation. This is particularly preoccupying in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, such as southern African savannas, which have

There is growing evidence for the prevalence of inversions among genomes of closely-related species, as well as within populations. Yet contributions of chromosomal rearrangements to adaptive evolution are still relatively poorly known. Even less is known on the effect of inversion polymorphisms on

Sexual dimorphism imposes the challenge to produce from a single genome two distinct phenotypes (male and female) with different adaptive optima. How sex chromosomes help solving this antagonism has been the subject of intense research, but remains incompletely demonstrated and controversial. One ma

Title: Seamounts as critical habitats for marine biodiversity. Oases of biodiversity, seamounts are among the least known habitats on Earth. Human impact is rapidly extending with major threats on marine vertebrates so species may disappear from seamounts without realizing it. SEAMOUNTS proposes

The project is devoted to the development of statistical methods specifically designed for analysing different types of ecological networks: trophic, mutualistic, competition or antagonistic and host-parasite systems. We propose to create a unique consortium of researchers combining applied statisti

Comprendre les liens entre biodiversité et fonctionnement des écosystèmes (BFEs) a des implications majeures. Les études sur les BFEs se sont intéressées aux mécanismes opérant à l’échelle interspécifique, alors que la biodiversité comprend une facette intraspécifique qui pourrait aussi affecter les