Being plastic is fantastic?
European Caudata and life cycle plasticity
PhD, Supervised by Anne-Claire Fabre (IEE, Universität Bern, Bern) & Julien Clavel (Université Lyon 1, Lyon)
Several European species of salamanders and newts exhibit the capability to manifest two different life cycle types (simple and complex) within the same species, depending on the population. For instance, the Alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris) can display either a paedomorphic or triphasic life cycle, while the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) can exhibit either pueriparous or larviparous reproduction.
Fire salamander:
Alpine newt:
Species with a complex life cycle undergo environmental shifts from the larval to the adult stage, making them exemplary models to assess an organism's capacity to adapt to environmental change by generating morphological variation in response to this challenge (evolvability).
To investigate this, I will quantify the morphological variation in several populations (at both larval and adult stages).
I will use linear measurements and geometric morphometrics from collection specimens housed in various European museums. I aim to determine whether populations with complex life cycles (biphasic and larviparous) exhibit higher morphological variability compared to those with simple life cycles (paedomorphic and pueriparous) through disparity analyses.
Lastly, I plan to test whether European salamander and newt populations with complex life cycles demonstrate more modularity than those with a simple life cycle. I will also evaluate the pattern and magnitude of phenotypic modularity and integration for each data set, depending on their developmental strategy.
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This PhD is part of a wider project exploring the effect of the complexity of metamorphosis on the evolutionary diversification of salamanders. ​​​​​
More informations about the Meta-Morphosis Project here:
