Roshan Vijendravarma

• Adaptation to larval nutritional stress: I use an experimental evolution and genetic approach to understand the implications of evolving adaptation to nutritional stress on other life history traits in Drosophila melanogaster. I am investigating changes in larval behavioral traits resulting in populations evolving tolerance to malnutrition. Additionally, I have also reported the genetic architecture of adaptation to larval nutritional stress using these populations.

• Evolution of body size under nutritional stress: Drosophila body size is smaller when reared under nutritional stress both at plastic and evolutionary level. I am interested in investigating the mechanisms associated with this size regulation.

• Parental effects: The juvenile environmental conditions of parents may have direct and indirect effects on offspring fitness and performance. I focus on one such environmental factor, parental nutrition as juveniles to elucidate such parental effects.

• Nutrition and immunity: In an attempt to understand the cross-talk between nutrition and immunity, I am currently investigating the susceptibility of Drosophila populations adapted to nutritional stress, to different bacterial pathogens in comparison to control populations. Thus, enabling us to understand to some extent, the physiological and evolutionary link between nutrition and immunity.

The interaction between ecological and evolutionary processes greatly interests me, especially as to how ecological factors both biotic and abiotic, evolutionarily shape an organism's life-history. A large part of my work has extensively used Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. For my doctoral research, I specifically focused on the interaction between Drosophila and its intracellular microsporidian parasite Tubulinosema kingi. Using an experimental evolution approach I showed that host populations can evolve resistance to microsporidia and that such increased resistance is costly. Additionally at a more physiological level I studied the within-host dynamics of this microsporidia and the host's immune response towards it. With a similar approach, I am investigating adaptations to juvenile malnutrition in Drosophila populations for my post-doctoral research (see below).

I have worked with a wide range of wild mammals and reptiles, as a rescuer and rehabilitator with non-governmental organisations for the past fifteen years. For my master's research I worked on a non invasive molecular method for determining the sex ratio of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in national parks from their dung samples. I have continued this field of research non-academically ever since. Currently, I serve as a research associate with the Indian captive elephant research team.

Education:

2004-2007:
Ph.D. (Evolutionary Biology), NERC-Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College, London, UK.
Thesis title: Host-pathogen interactions in Drosophila-Tubulinosema kingi model system.
Advisors: Prof. Charles Godfray, Dr. Alex Kraaijeveld, Dr. Donald Quicke.

2000-2002:
M.Sc. (Biotechnology), Bangalore University, India.
Thesis title: Sex ratio determination of Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) in Bandipur national park using a molecular method (zinc finger gene).
Advisor: Prof. Raman Sukumar, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.

1997-2000:
B.Sc. (Microbiology), Bangalore University, India.
Project title: Role of microbes in brewing industry.
Advisor: Mr. Pavan Kumar, Senior microbiologist, United Breweries, Bangalore.

1998-1999:
B.Sc. Honors (Genetic Engineering) JIVS, Bangalore, India.

2005:
Generalized linear modeling & Statistics using R: Silwood Park, UK.
2006:
Advances in Ecology- a residential workshop on Ecology; Silwood Park, UK.
2007:
Introduction to MBA: Tanaka Business School, UK.
2011:
Certificate course in handling venomous snakes; Foundation Vivarium de Lausanne, Switzerland.

2008 - Current:
Post-doctoral research fellow, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Advisor: Prof. Tadeusz Kawecki.

2004 - 2007:
Ph.D. Student in Evolutionary Biology, NERC-Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, UK.
Advisors: Prof. Charles Godfray, Dr. Alex Kraaijeveld & Prof. Donald Quicke.

BP-NERC-Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award 2004:
The award of £75,000 funded my PhD tuition fees and scholarship at NERC-Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London.

1994-2004:
Rescuer & Rehabilitator, Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), Bangalore, India.

1999-2004:
Rescuer & Rehabilitator, Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC), Bangalore, India.

2007:
Centre de Génétique Moléculaire, CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

2007:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.

2008:
Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

2009:
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

SSE- Society for the Study of Evolution
ASN-American Society of Naturalists
SZS- Swiss Zoological Society
ESEB- European Society for Evolutionary Biology
CPCSEA-Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (India)

• Animal welfare officer – Animal welfare board of India (AWBI)
• Institutional animal ethics committee nominee for research institutes, appointed by the Committee for the purpose of control and supervision of experiments on animals, Government of India.
• Research associate - Assessment of captive elephants of India, jointly investigated by Asian nature conservation foundation, WSPA, CUPA and WRRC.
• Scientific advisor and managing committee member– CUPA and WRRC