US- Argentina Planning Visit: Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics of Cactophilic Drosophila

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This award will support two researchers, one senior and one junior, from the U.S. under the direction of Dr. Therese A. Markow, on a planning visit to Argentina to take place in November 2010. The primary goal of this visit is to develop collaborations on Catcophilic Drosophila research between investigators and students at the University of California-San Diego, Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina, Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, and Universidad de Chile in Chile. The planning trip is intended to produce the blueprint for a a PIRE proposal and possibly others to be submitted during the following year. The researchers will compare the biology of two Drosophila-cactus systems that evolved independently, one in North and the other in South America. The research topics to be discussed include the evolutionary genetics of host shifts, reproductive isolation and genetic differentiation (speciation), ecological interactions, and general patterns. This multinational effort will be useful in developing international, broad-based strategies to manage responses to global change.The collaborators will bring complementary skills to the project. The U. S. researchers specialize on the North American system while the researchers from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile have extensive experience with the South American system. The planning meetings will be teleconferenced to the home institutions of all the PIs, thus enabling the participation of a large number of students and postdocs in at least five countries.