Marisol de la Mora Curiel

Visiting Graduate Student (2015)

 

Marisol sitting at deskl love to study the evolution of new species; I am particularly interested to know how selection promotes speciation and to what extent genetic drift is involved in this process, how it has been balancing the gene flow, and the genetic differentiation across all the distribution range of the species. It is also important to me to know what are the mechanisms by which the species are facing the pressure of selection in phenotypic terms and genetic terms. To gain a basic understanding about the origin of species, I am working to build the phylogeny of a weevil genus (Trichobaris), then going deeper with geometric morphometric analysis and phylogeographic approximation.

While at Harvard, I will do sampling of three species of Trichobaris in order to complete the phylogeny, performing genetics analysis in the laboratory of Dr. Brian D. Farrell. Additionally, l will take photographs of the Trichobaris from the entomological collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology.