Considering animals most people think about vertebrates and thereby especially mammals and birds. These are often considered the most sophisticated and evolutionary successful animals on earth. However, this is not true taking into account evolutionary history, biodiversity, ecology or biomass. Invertebrates outshine vertebrates in all these categories. Moreover, invertebrates have evolved novel structures and inhabited habitats unoccupied by vertebrates. Hence, invertebrates have much to teach us about evolution in general and in particular. On the other hand, except for a few flagship species or groups invertebrates are heavily understudied, especially considering marine invertebrates. The latter are especially important as all animal live depends on water and originated from the marine realm. Hence, understanding the evolution of marine invertebrates will help us to understand evolution at much more detailed and complete level.
Cryptic species represent biological entities that are morphologically almost indistinguishable from one another. However, this raises the question as to why these species are seemingly not diverging at the morphological level. Different scenarios have been put forward and, among these is that it could be due to sufficient degrees of ongoing gene flow. Recently we identified several cryptic species of Stygocapitella in the World’s Ocean and some of them have not altered their appearance since the dinosaurs walked the Earth. To understand their evolution better we have, for example, obtained genomic level data to analyze these populations using double-digest restriction site-associated DNA-Seq (ddRAD). In this part, you will be able to analyze different populations using population genomic tools to address questions concerning their distribution, evolution and if they are still capable of hybridizing with each other. Hence if you are interest in applying modern population genomic tools to taxonomic questions contact us and we can discuss possible Master projects in this part.
Günter Purschke (University of Osnabrück).
What you will learn: You will learn to use the tools and principles of population genetics, zoology, genomics and evolutionary biology. This will include, among others, population genomics, sequencing techniques,