Glib Mazepa

I am focused on the evolutionary consequences of the clonal inheritance using the water frogs genus Pelophylax as a study system. These animals are famous for the unusual reproduction mode called hybridogenesis, which results from incomplete postzygotic isolation: the interbreeding parental species produce fertile hybrids, which lack recombination between the parental chromosome sets. My means of backcrossing to one of the parental species, such hybrids establish clonal lines that can persist for many generations.

The existing data point onto the multiple independent origin of the clonal lineages all across Europe, which presumably also differ in their age of formation. The simultaneous existence of the ancestral state (= sexual species) on the one hand and the numerous clones of different age on the other hand altogether provide a unique opportunity to study the processes similar to ones accompanying sex chromosome evolution (e.g. cessation of recombination, Mueller’s ratchet, gene conversion, etc.), but acting rather on the whole genome than a single chromosome scale.

As for the beginning of my PhD, I am trying to establish a robust phylogenetic framework for the sexual species which later on will be complemented with the clonal lines using both RAD sequencing and sanger markers produced from the genomic and transcriptomic data.