PhD - Student

Email: ev274@cam.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1223 336664

Erik has always been fascinated by the way species adapt to new
environments and the processes involved in speciation. Even during his
early career as a secondary school teacher he used to highlight the
textbook examples of adaptive radiations such as Darwin's finches on
the Galápagos islands and the cichlids of the East African Great
Lakes. During his MSc at Leiden University in The Netherlands he
started to work on the African butterfly Bicyclus anynana. After an
extensive research project he was able to show that the production of
the male sex pheromones is reduced significantly by inbreeding in
these butterflies and able to explain how this impairs inbred male
reproductive success.

During that period he learned that B. anynana is a special model
organism in ecology and evolution. Variations in wing colour patterns
and life-history traits have a clear ecological relevance that is
associated with dramatic differences in ecological environments
represented by the dry and wet seasons in East Africa. In addition,
the Bicyclus genus, as well as closely related genera from independent
radiations in Asia and Madagascar (Mycalesina butterflies), are
species-rich. This provides opportunities to explore, for instance,
diversity among species for wing patterning, life histories, and male
secondary sexual traits. During his PhD, he will explore whether the
evolutionary history of these Mycalesina butterflies is closely tied
to the evolutionary history of their host plants. He will especially
focus on how the evolution of the C4 photosynthetic pathway in grasses
led to the evolution of larval characters that allow Mycalesina
butterflies to interact with their new, C4 grass-dominated,
environments.