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Patrick Rohner

Research

Research in the Rohner lab integrates concepts and approaches from evolutionary developmental biology, evolutionary ecology, and genetics to better understand how biological diversity arises and evolves. Focusing on insects, we are especially interested in how plasticity, developmental bias, and organism-environment interactions shape phenotypes and their evolution. Ongoing and future research centers on i) the mechanisms and consequences of plasticity, ii) the role of developmental bias in evolution, and iii) the contributions of symbionts to development and evolution.

Mechanisms and evolutionary consequences of developmental plasticity

Environment-dependent development is common and has major effects on trait expression, yet the underlying mechanisms and the evolutionary consequences are insufficiently understood. We study the strongly plastic morphology of dung beetles and black scavenger flies to better understand the evolution of, and through, plasticity. We do so by integrating transcriptomics, functional genetics (RNAi), and geometric morphometrics.

Role of developmental bias in evolution

Perturbation of development often has non-random effects on trait expression. Such developmental variability (or bias) is well established and canonically thought of as a constraint on adaptation, making evolution more likely to proceed in certain directions. However, developmental variability is also a product of evolution and has the potential to respond to selection. We study dung beetles and dung flies to advance our current understanding of how developmental variability evolves and whether it constrains or facilitates adaptation.

Host-symbiont relationships and their role in development and evolution

Symbiotic relationships can affect development and may play a particular role in evolution if symbionts are vertically inherited from parents to offspring. We use experimental manipulations of the presence of vertically inherited symbionts in dung beetles to assess their function in host development and assess their effects on host genetics and evolution.

Beetle with short and long horn

Males of many dung beetle species develop exaggerated head horns that are used in fighting over access to females. The length of these horns is determined by developmental plasticity: small males that grew up in a low-quality environment only develop minute horns (left) while large males that had access to high-quality nutrition develop large, elongated horns (right)

Patrick Rohner

Select Publications

  • Rohner P.T. & Berger D. (2023) Developmental bias predicts 60 million years of wing shape evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120:e2211210120. (PMID: 3712672)
  • Rohner P.T. & A.P. Moczek (2023) Allometric plasticity and the evolution of environment-by-environment (E×E) interactions during a rapid range expansion of a dung beetle. Evolution. 77:682-689. (PMID: 36626800)
  • Rohner P.T., Y. Hu, & A.P. Moczek (2022) Developmental bias in the plasticity and evolution of beetle horns. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 289:20221441. (PMID: 36168764)
  • Rohner P.T. (2022) Secondary sexual trait melanization in ‘black’ scavenger flies: nutritional plasticity and its evolution. The American Naturalist 199:168-177. (PMID: 34978972)
  • Rohner P.T (2021) A role for sex determination genes in life history evolution? Doublesex mediates sexual size dimorphism in the gazelle dung beetle. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 34:1326-1332. (PMID: 34075658)
  • Rohner P.T., D.M. Linz, & A.P. Moczek (2021) Doublesex mediates species-, sex-, environment-, and trait-specific exaggeration of size and shape. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 288: 20210241. (PMID: 34157867)
  • Rohner P.T, & A.P. Moczek (2020) Rapid differentiation of plasticity in life history and morphology during invasive range expansion and concurrent local adaptation in the horned beetle Onthophagus taurus. Evolution. 74: 2059-2072. (PMID: 32558925)
  • Blanckenhorn W.U., Baur J., Busso J.P., Giesen A., Gourgoulianni N., van Koppenhagen N., Roy J., Schäfer M.A., Wegmann A., and Rohner P.T. (2020) Sexual size dimorphism is associated with reproductive life history trait differentiation in coexisting sepsid flies. Oikos 129:1152-1162.
  • Rohner P. T., J. Roy, M.A. Schäfer, D. Berger, & W.U. Blanckenhorn (2019) Does thermal plasticity predict clinal variation in wing size and shape? An inter- and intraspecific comparison in two sepsid flies. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 32:463-475. (PMID: 32558925)
  • Rohner P.T, & W.U. Blanckenhorn (2018) A comparative study of the role of sex-specific condition dependence in the evolution of sexually dimorphic traits. The American Naturalist. 192:E202-E215. (PMID: 30444660)

Biography

Patrick Rohner carried out his doctoral research with Wolf Blanckenhorn at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2018, he became a SNSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biology Indiana University with Armin Moczek. Patrick will join UCSD in July 2023 where he will establish his independent research laboratory.

Headshot of Patrick Rohner