Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biosciences Related to the Environment for FY 1998

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Abstract DBI-9804122 Lila Fishman This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biosciences Related to the Environment for 1998. This fellowship provides an opportunity for the Fellow to gain additional scientific training beyond the doctoral degree and to pursue innovative and imaginative research into the fundamental mechanisms underlying the interactions between organisms and their environment at the molecular, cellular, organismal, population, community and/or ecosystem level in any area of biology supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences of the National Science Foundation. Each fellowship supports a research and training plan to be carried out in a sponsoring laboratory. The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled genetic mechanisms and consequences of mating system divergence in the Mimulus guttatus species complex: a case study of adaptive evolution. This project addresses fundamental questions about the action and interaction of genes of major effect in adaptive evolution. Introgression lines based on a linkage map of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) involved in mating system divergence in Mimulus will be used to estimate direct and epistatic effects on floral morphology, mating behavior, and fitness. Measures of male fitness define the genetic constraints on the selfer transmission advantage assumed by most models of mating system evolution. The research also evaluates the impact of the observed genetic architecture on the speciation process by measuring reproductive isolation between divergent taxa.