PhD students within the research area Population Genetics.
Camilla Christensen
Title of PhD project
Population genomics of archived shark samples
Supervisors
Einar Eg Nielsen, Michael B. Bennett and Jennifer Ovenden
Background of project
Archived specimens held in museums and other natural history collections can provide a population genetic baseline, against which to assess potential negative consequences of recent changes in the environment. Thereby, offering an opportunity to track demographic and evolutionary consequences of climate change and other human-induced pressures. The recent advances in molecular genomics has made it possible to investigate genetic changes in many individuals sampled more than a century ago. However, few retrospective genomic analyses has comprised sharks.
About the project
This PhD project is part of an international collaborative project, GenoJaws, involving the University of Queensland, Technical University of Denmark and Flinders University. The ambition of the project is to gain knowledge about population genetic parameters of the vulnerable sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus) on a spatial and temporal scale. Performing genomic analysis on contemporary and historical samples will allow us to test for changes in abundance, effective population size, distribution and connectivity and ultimately make us capable of evaluating adaptive responses to environmental change and exploitation.
Perspective
By tracking changes in genetic composition on a temporal scale, it is possible to find evidence of both distributional shifts and responses to selection. Ultimately, analysis of such records, taken over several years, can help us understand micro evolutionary processes. In addition, retrospective analysis can help making informed decisions for the protection and management of the current populations of sand tiger sharks.
Previous PhD students (since 2020)
Paulina Urban
Practical implementations of the eDNA concept for marine resources monitoring
(link awaits publication of thesis)
Homère J. Alves Monteiro
Applied population genomics in the native European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis)
Go to DTU Orbit to download thesis
Alice Manuzzi
Genomic analysis of DNA from archived shark jaws
Go to DTU Orbit to download thesis