Evolutionary Biology (Research)

Our PhD/MPhil Evolutionary Biology programme enables you to undertake a research project at the cutting-edge of the field using different experimental, field, molecular, genomics, epigenomics and bioinformatics technologies that will improve understanding of Evolutionary Biology.

Evolution is the key to understanding many fundamental questions in the life sciences. To comprehend the diversity of life on earth, it is essential to know the evolutionary link between organisms and the processes by which new traits originate and are maintained.

In the biomedical sciences, comparisons of model organisms to humans, emergence of antibiotic resistance, or the identification of pathogen strains from molecular information all involve evolutionary processes. Therefore, evolution is of central importance to most areas of the life sciences.

Research in evolutionary biology covers a wide range of questions about evolutionary patterns and processes in microbes, plants and animals. Particular faculty strengths are evolutionary genetics and genomics, epigenomics, phyologenetics, behavioural ecology and evolutionary developmental biology.

The breadth of research topics is reflected in a diversity of state of the art techniques used, such as genome sequencing, epigenomics and CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, but also field, bioinformatics and transcriptomics research, mathematical modelling.

Examples of areas of investigation include:

• evolution of shapes and morphometrics

• molecular and genome evolution

• evolution of networks

• organismal and behavioural evolution

• phenotypic plasticity and epigenetics

• theoretical biology and evolution of mating strategies

• Antimicrobial resistance and its evolution