Pim Edelaar, post doc

Contact

Address
Departamento de Biologia de la Conservacion Estación Biológica de Doñana CSIC c/ Americo Vespucio, s/n, 41092, Sevilla
Spain

Telephone
(+34) 954 232 340

Telefax
(+34) 954 621 125

Awards / prizes

- Best talk at the 1996 Edward Grey Institute student-conference, Oxford, U.K.
- 3rd Prize for best poster at the 2006 24th International Ornithological Conference, Hamburg, Germany
- 2nd Prize in the 2001 Wader Study Group Annual Meeting poster competition
- 3rd Runner Up for the 2001 NECOV Ecology-Prize (competition in proposal writing)

Research Interests

My main interests are in local adaptation, population differentiation and speciation. As part of my post-doctoral Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship I am testing to what extent different processes such as habitat selection, sexual selection and natural selection, and neutral evolution have resulted in the patterns of diversity observed in the wild. In addition, I am exploring the limits of evolvability by testing if, how and why evolution is constrained in magnitude and direction, e.g. due to genetic correlations among traits.

Study System

Crossbills (genus Loxia) provide a highly suitable study system for these questions, since they allow for the detailed mapping of phenotype (bill morphology) to performance (food intake rate and survival) both in the field and in the lab. Various stages from (sympatric) initial population differentiation to full species differences among the approximately 30 taxa in the crossbill-complex are available for comparisons.

Crossbills are highly specialized in foraging on seeds from conifers, with steep performance trade-offs. This observation, in combination with their high dispersal capacities, means that these finches may show population differentiation and speciation despite the potential for ongoing gene flow. Their popularity with amateur birdwatchers and ringers and their relative ease of captive breeding produces data sets that otherwise would be hard to collect. In addition, much information on the historical distribution, ecology and genetics of conifers is available, allowing for increased levels of interpretation. Given the number of hardly known crossbill taxa in Asia, and the recent discovery of sympatric vocally differentiated types in Europe, many exciting projects lie ahead.

For results so far, please see my publication list.
For more information on research in crossbills, see Benkman Lab

Ongoing Projects

Together with collaborators and students from Sweden, The Netherlands, France, Spain and the USA, I am working on the following projects:

- modelling speciation with gene flow driven by sexual selection on indicators of condition
- Matching Habitat Choice as an adaptive individual behaviour driving population differentiation
- signals of divergent selection using variation among age cohorts and the Qst method
- the role of geography versus resource use in population structuring in vocalisations, biometry and genetics (mainly in Spain)
- the evolution of the bill as a complex trait by studying the constraining effect of two genetically correlated bill traits on adaptation
- antagonistic selection in bill traits due to infection with scaly leg mites
- constraints on sexual dimorphism and modularity of bill and body traits
- (lack of) genetic differentiation in microsatellites, nuclear and mtDNA among sympatric, continental Common and Parrot crossbills
- a molecular phylogeny for all distinct populations of crossbills of the world

I am also exploring future projects using insects as model organisms to test for Matching Habitat Choice and various drivers of reproductive isolation.

Since 2004 I have spent quite a bit of time in Argentina, and am interested in or involved with several projects on habitat-dependence of dialects in Rufous-collared sparrows, use of waste water treatment plants by waterfowl, identification and population differentiation in Steamerducks (Tachyeres spp.), colour polymorphism in Crested Caracara, bill size and shape of three sympatric oystercatchers, and life history variation among northern and southern birds.