Kim Mortega Email & Phone Number

I am a Doctoral Student with a passion for exploring and understanding Nature. I am at the final stage of my PhD. Thus, my world is currently revolving exclusively around this fascinating topic:Allochronic and geographic reproductive isolation in an African songbirdSpeciation involves reproductive isolation between diverging populations. Determining initial reproductive barriers and the ecological forces that shape them is thus crucial for understanding evolution. This study examines the role of seasonal timing for local adaptation, progressive isolation and possibly speciation in a songbird, the African stonechat Saxicola torquata axillaris. Stonechats have robust circannual programs and breed annually under favourable seasonal conditions. Seasonality in East Africa varies over short distance, and could thereby impose barriers. Based on earlier indication of local divergence, the present study tests allochronic isolation in the field. Specifically, it uses the role of song in mate choice and local diversification to study behavioral isolation and relates it to genetic divergence. In principle, genes and vocalizations should both diverge with increasing distance. However, if timing promotes isolation and is communicated by song, local seasonality should have greater impact on differences in genes and song than expected from spatial distance. Allochronic isolation and geographically distinct song in Stonechats may play an essential role in genetic structuring and are likely to have important implications for the evolutionary dynamics, ecological flexibility, and adaptive ability of birds.

Listed skills include Evolution, Ecology, Wildlife Biology, Bioacoustics, and 12 others.

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  Freie Universität Berlin

  Biology/Biological Sciences, General