Biology Weekly Seminar - Catherine Linnen

From mutations to species: causes and consequences of phenotypic variation in pine sawflies 

The central goal of Dr. Linnen’s research program is to understand the origin of biodiversity. Her group is working to understand how individual mutations impact on the multi-faceted formation of new species. Because much of evolution is likely to be idiosyncratic, a long-term goal of their research is to identify those features of evolution that are predictable/repeatable when examined across different traits and organisms. To address these questions, they use pine sawflies in the genus Neodiprion as their evolutionary model.