PhD Student, M.Sc.

Beatriz Diaz Pauli

PhD Title: Experimental approach on the study of evolutionary effects of fishing.

Supervisors: Mikko Heino, Anne Christine Utne Palm and David Reznick

My PhD research is part of the EvoFish project on fisheries-induced evolution and my work will mainly focus on the experimental side of this project.

For this purpose, we will create experimental populations that will be subject to harvesting in an equivalent manner as common fisheries on marine harvested stocks. Different life history and behavioural traits will be measured through several generations to assess effects of harvesting on the development of the populations. The Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata, will be used as a model species, as the study of evolution in wild marine fishes is not possible. The short generation time of Guppies allow us to study the effect of selection over generations within a acceptable timeframe.

Biography.

I obtained my degree in Biology from the University of Murcia (Spain) in 2005, during most of this time I worked for the Laboratory of Aquariology of the Zoology Department. I moved to Finland in 2006 to work as an assistant for Prof. Kai Lindström at the University of Helsinki. In total, I stayed in Finland for two years, during my first year I assisted, both in the lab and in the field, Outi Ala-Honkola and Marja Järvenpää with their projects polyandry in the least killifish, Heterandria formosa, and on eutrophication effects on the mating system of the sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus, respectively. The following year, I worked on my Master thesis with Outi Ala-Honkola, studying inbreeding effects on male reproductive behaviour in the least killifish at the University of Helsinki. Afterwards, I moved to Åbo Akademi (Turku, Finland) where I have been working on a project on how a changing environment influences sexual selection and mate choice in the sand goby fish, also working with Kai Lindström there.