Bio: Marco Crotti (PhD student)

Marco Crotti, PhD student

I have broad interests in evolution, population genetics, taxonomy, phylogenetics, and macroevolution.

My career in evolutionary biology started during at the Natural History Museum in London, where I conducted my MSc and worked for a bit. There I worked on population structure of African anurans, and the impact of missing data in phylogenetic reconstruction using RADseq. The research project I was hired for looked at ways to better identify rogue taxa in phylogenetic trees using existing software.

I am now at the University of Glasgow, learning more about population genetics techniques. My phd focuses on European whitefish, a species of salmonid which is widespread in the Palearctic but endangered in the UK. This species is very interesting from an evolutionary perspective, showing a really high level of phenotypic diversity across its range.

One aim of the phd is to understand the biogeography of the species in the UK, and how British stocks are related to other European populations.  The main project though focuses on the translocation of the species in several reservoirs in Scotland. Using a combination of morphometrics, ecology, common garden experiments, genomics and epigenetics, we will try to understand how rapidly species can respond to new environments, and what the major forces are behind these adaptations.

In addition to my phd research, I also collaborated in other projects, focusing on phylogenetics and macroevolution of Amphibians and Mammals.



Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to new lab members!

New paper: Functional genetic basis of reproductive mode