News

2023-05-05: Freed earned PhD

Freed successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled: Host-parasite genomics and ecology: Linking genes and transcriptomes to disease and contemporary selection.

I happily congratulate Freed for this achievement!

Freed’s thesis received the grade “accepted with honours” on 2023-05-16!

2023-04-31: Andrew earned PhD

Andrew successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled: Factors affecting lipid profiles in juvenile Atlantic salmon.

I happily congratulate Andrew for this achievement!

2021-12-26: Publication in Molecular Ecology mentioned as a journal highlight of 2021

One of Freed’s publications from 2021 (The strength and form of natural selection on transcript abundance in the wild) has been mentioned in the “Editorial 2022” by the journal Molecular Ecology as one of four studies that are “an appreciation for the complex suite of molecular mechanisms responsible for phenotypic variation and adaptation, including gene expression, methylation, and alternative splicing“.

All of the co-authors are happy about it and congrat Freed (the first author) for this achievement that is part of his PhD thesis.

2021-11-05: New publication linking acclimation temperature with genetic variation for extreme heat tolerance

Being tolerant towards heat waves may be increasingly important for organisms under ongoing global warming.

We published a study that presents evidence that the genetic variation (which sets the scope for a possible thermal adaptation) and heritability (which sets the speed for a possible thermal adaption) for extreme heat tolerance (approximated by the critical thermal maximum; CTmax) both get smaller with increasing temperature experienced prior to the heat wave (that is, the acclimation temperature).

These results suggest that studies using too cold acclimation temperatures may overestimate the adaptive potential and warrants using realistic warming scenarios, such as a high acclimation temperature, for studies on extreme heat tolerance.

We conducted this study in Norway with collegues from the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen. It covers three additional traits and has been published in Heredity as an editor’s choice (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41437-021-00469-y) and a free read-only link can be found HERE.

The original title is: Genetic variation for upper thermal tolerance diminishes within and between populations with increasing acclimation temperature in Atlantic salmon.