Christina Bergey

Postdoctoral Researcher

Email: cbergey (at) nd (dot) edu

Office: 329 Galvin Life Sciences

Phone: 574-631-8936

 

I am a population geneticist with broad interests, but the main goal of my research is understanding how adaptive genetic variation is transmitted between species and populations. Different parts of the genome have different evolutionary histories and when barriers to gene flow are absent or reduced, admixture or hybridization can occur between lineages that were previously distinct. My work uses computational approaches to understand what happens when the new combinations that result are exposed to natural selection for the first time. If some give a fitness benefit, adaptive genetic variation will be swapped between lineages, making admixture or hybridization a potentially powerful evolutionary phenomenon.

Though my background is in biological anthropology, with a Ph.D. from New York University on a wild baboon hybrid zone, I currently investigate the importance of gene flow in mosquitoes of genus Anopheles, with particular focus on An. gambiae, the major vector of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As a postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Nora Besansky, I am working on several interconnected genomics projects:

• An investigation into natural and human-assisted gene flow between islands on Lake Victoria in Uganda, which have been put forth as potential pilot sites for vector control initiatives;
• A study of the ecological and anthropogenic influences on mosquito population structure in Cameroon, West Africa and their interaction with a major chromosomal inversion with known association to ecology, in particular aridity tolerance; and
• A study of Anopheles bwambae, a poorly-known species restricted to geothermal hot springs in faults of East African Rift System which, as an "island" species, may provide key insight into the importance of private alleles and resistance to introgression.