Evolution of biotic interactions

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Welcome
​The Whiteman Laboratory is at the University of California, Berkeley is within the Department of Integrative Biology and is affiliated with the Center for Computational Biology, Essig Museum of Entomology, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and University and Jepson Herbaria. 

Our research follows from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, who focused on the evolution of new traits shaped by ecological interactions between organisms, whether within or between species. Such interactions are an evolutionary crucible in which new adaptations are forged, increasing the fitness of their bearers. Traits arising from competition, host-parasite, predator-prey and mutualistic interactions are often more straightforward to study than those shaped by the abiotic environment because their genomic architectures tend to be simpler, and their evolutionary histories more dynamic. Species interactions can also drive the evolution of reproductive isolation, resulting in the origin of new species.

We use interdisciplinary approaches to study the role that species interactions play in driving the evolution of new adaptations and new species. We address these questions by integrating our research across levels of biological organization, using tools from behavior, biochemistry, chemical ecology, comparative anatomy/morphology/physiology, computational biology, evolution of development, genetics (including CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing), genomics, molecular and cellular biology, plant biology, phylogeny and neuroscience. We study systems involving plant-animal and plant-animal-microbial interactions.

An emerging them in our lab focuses on the evolution of toxins produced by bacteria, plants and animals, as well as the evolution of toxin resistance. Sometimes these toxins, or even the genes involved in making them, are acquired by a different species through the diet or horizontal gene transfer. 

​The evolution of toxicity transforms animal phenotypes from cryptic to conspicuous, nocturnal to diurnal, small to big, fast to slow, solitary to social, local to widespread, neglectful to doting parents and short- to long-lived. But toxicity is not only restricted to gaudy animals. A parallel transformation unfolded as cells of the animal immune system became armed with an arsenal of novel toxins. The repeated evolution of acquired toxicity in animals provides an unmatched opportunity to resolve an important paradox in evolution. On the one hand, organisms are more than the sum of their parts. Evolution somehow elegantly integrates disparate phenotypic modules into whole organisms. On the other hand, pleiotropy constrains natural selection from simultaneously acting on different phenotypic modules. Yet, toxic animals thread this needle as disparate novelties evolve in lockstep, as new adaptive zones are entered.

One of the most salient examples of how toxins can drive adaptation in other species is the monarch butterfly (images below by Julie Johnson). Eggs hatch on toxic milkweeds and as the caterpillars eat, they sequester cardiac glycoside heart poisons in their bodies through metamorphosis and are nearly completely resistant to their negative effects. The ability to resist and even acquire the toxins as a defense of their own opened a door to a suite of adaptations in the monarch, from its bright colors, which evolved to warn birds of their toxicity, to their migration from the prairies of Canada and the U.S. to the mountains of Mexico.

Lab news
July-August 2020
-Dr. Marianna Karageorgi moves to Professor Dmitri Petrov's lab at Stanford to continue studying insect-toxin evolution!
-Dr. Rebecca Duncan just successfully made the cross-country trip to return to her childhood home in Atlanta!
-Noah and Professor Mary (Cassie) Stoddard were awarded a new four-year NSF grant to study Broad tailed hummingbird biology at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Princeton University and UC-Berkeley!
-Noah was awarded a California Conservation Genomics Project grant to study the genomic basis of co-adaptation in the California Pipevine and California Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly!
-Jessica Aguilar and Noah Whiteman were awarded a mentee-mentor HHMI Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study designed "to build inclusive lab environments and helping increase diversity among the next generation of scientists." 

May-July 2020
-Saron Akalu (undergraduate student) was accepted to the UC-Berkeley Integrative Biology undergraduate program!
-Kirsten Verster (Ph.D. candidate) was accepted as a Graduate Remote Instruction Innovation Fellow for the summer!
-Julianne Peláez (Ph.D. candidate) won a Chateaubriand Fellowship from the Embassy of France in the United States to travel to France and collaborate with Professor Fredéric Marion Poll on gustatory functional evolution in Scaptomyza! Julianne also led a France-Berkeley Fund collaborative proposal that was funded to further strengthen the collaboration between the Marion Poll lab and our lab!
-Diler Haji (Ph.D. student) was awarded a Graduate Research Excellence Grant -- the R.C. Lewontin Early Award, from the Society for the Study of Evolution for his research on evolutionary genomics!
-Nicolas Alexandre (Ph.D. candidate) was awarded a Philomathia Fellowship from UC-Berkeley for his research on hummingbird adaptation!
-Shivani Sundaram (undergraduate student) will be attending medical school at University of Southern California in Fall 2020!

March-April 2020
-Kirsten Verster (Ph.D. candidate) won the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award from UC-Berkeley!
-Diler Haji (Ph.D. student) won the Short-Term Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Fellowship to study tropical fruit flies and inversions!
-Jessica Aguilar (Ph.D. candidate) was awarded Big C Funds from UC-Berkeley for inclusiveIB initiative in Integrative Biology!
-Dr. Tim O'Connor (former Ph.D. candidate) landed a three year NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship from NIH to work with Professor Marcus Kronforst (and in collaboration with Professors Joy Bergelson and Joe Thornton) at University of Chicago!
-Julianne Peláez (Ph.D. candidate) won a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research!
-Dr. Teruyuki Matsunaga (Postdoctoral fellow)  won a  Uehara Memorial Foundation Research Fellowship!
-Professor Noah Whiteman was awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship on April 8th!

Why do we study biotic interactions?