The project
An integrative analysis of the mechanisms of phenotypic novelty: form and behaviour evolution in fruit flies
Winner
Dr Nicolas Gompel
UMR CNRS/Université de la méditerranée
Case 907, Parc Scientifique de Luminy
Marseille 13288
France
Nicolas Gompel’s current work on the genetics of fruit flies fits well with his passion for insects as an amateur entomologist. Gompel, aged 34, has amassed a personal collection of 15,000 beetles and has close relationships with museums and specialists all over the world. The EURYI project has roots in Gompel’s work on fly wing pigmentation patterns as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Sean Carroll at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, from 2002 – 2005. Before that Gompel was a PhD student at the University of Montpellier in the laboratory of Dr. Alain Ghysen.
He will soon join efforts with Dr Benjamin Prud’homme in a shared laboratory to address the questions of the origin of phenotypic novelty.
He said: “We are all delighted with this award, as it will give us an unprecedented level of freedom to achieve an ambitious scientific goal: to get a thorough grasp of the evolutionary mechanisms underlying trait changes between closely related animal species, whether the trait is a morphological one, or a behavioural one.”
