Alan Bergland wins prestigious NIH postdoctoral fellowship

Alan Bergland wins prestigious NIH postdoctoral fellowship
Alan Bergland was just awarded an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship to study the evolution of Drosophila melanogaster in temperate climates. The experiments outlined in his proposal will use whole genome resequencing of populations of flies collected along latitudinal clines and through the growing season. These data will allow him to test hypotheses about the demographic consequences of seasonal population booms and busts. He will also be able to use these data to identify alleles that show both latitudinal and seasonal variation; these spatially and temporally balanced polymorphisms are likely to directly underlie adaptation to temperate environments. 
This fellowship will give Alan the opportunity to learn population genomics and will complement his graduate studies on evolutionary quantitative genetics of life history traits. The project is going to be done in collaboration with Prof. Paul Schmidt (U. Penn) - the premier scholar in Drosophila evolutionary biology and genetics of adaptation to temperate climates.