“There is probably no organisms without parasites or pathogens”. Such a sentence points towards the crucial role that parasites play in the evolution of their hosts. Using experiments conducting in our lab, I will argue that parasites represent a classic natural selection pressure to which their hosts genetically adapt. Furthermore, I will show that non-genetic inheritance of parasite resistance/tolerance can evolve when parents and offspring share the same parasitic environments. Lastly, placing host-parasite interactions in a broad ecological context, I will demonstrate that parasites drive eco-evolutionary feedbacks. For this seminar, I will focus on the three-spined stickleback fish, an established model system for evolutionary and ecological studies.

Seminario organizado por el Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN), CSIC.