The Genetic Architecture of Colour and the Evolution of Marine colour polymorphisms

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Colour in the animal kingdom is widely used for a variety of purposes and in some instances,may also act as a direct phenotypic indicator of underlying genetic control, providing a modelfor the exploration of fundamental evolutionary processes. To date, the role of colour in themarine realm has been poorly studied. Furthermore, colour pigments in marine organismshave rarely been characterised and very little is known about the molecular control of coloursynthesis in marine invertebrates. As almost 70% of the Earth's surface is water, and morethan 80% of animal phyla are exclusively aquatic, this represents a major gap in ourunderstanding of the natural world.One exception to this rule is the tropical seastar Linckia laevigata, a common species thatexists as a variety of colour morphs. The pigments responsible for the deep royal bluecolouration of the most striking colour morph are known, and the entire colour gene has beensequenced. L.laevigata therefore provides a unique model for the basis of studies of marinecolour.This PhD will initially focus on establishing whether colour variation in L.laevigata isdependent on protein variation and so heritable. It will also encompass colour variationthroughout the echinoderms and use gene insertion techniques to study the role of the genein vivo. In addition, I aim to reconstruct a new phylogeny of the Asteroidea as there iscurrently little consensus as to the relationships within the group.