Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001

Mead, Louise S, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001. The fellowship supports research and training at the postdoctoral level at the intersection of biology and the informational, computational, mathematical, and statistical sciences. The goal of the fellowship is to provide training to a young scientist in preparation for a career in biological informatics in which research and education will be integrated. There is an increasing need for training in biological informatics at all occupational levels, and it is expected that Fellows trained through these fellowships will play important roles in training of the future workforce. The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "A new approach to modeling the evolution of sexual isolation." This project explores the evolutionary dynamics of sexual isolation in salamanders and Drosophila. Theoretical models are being used to simulate evolution of sexual isolation given a phylogeny. Simulated data matrices will be compared to empirical data, providing the first tests of the roles of inheritance, drift, selection, and reinforcement in the evolution of sexual isolation across clades.