ERC CONVERGEANT
TEAM MEMBERS
Frédéric Delsuc
Principal Investigator
My background in mammalian phylogenetics and phylogenomics led me to propose this integrative project aimed at deciphering the mechanisms underlying convergent evolution in ant-eating mammals by studying their morphologies, genomes, and microbiomes.
Lionel Hautier
Associated Investigator
Lionel is coordinating the morphological part of the project. He has a long interested in understanding morphological evolution and development using modern phenotyping technics such as 3D geometric morphometrics based on microCT scans.
Sophie Teullet
PhD Student
Sophie did her Master Degree on molecular evolution, comparative genomics, and transcriptomics of chitinase genes. Her follow-up PhD project focuses on dietary adaptations in the genomes and microbiomes of ant-eating mammals.
PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Marie-Ka Tilak
Lab Manager
Marie-ka is a CNRS research assistant in molecular biology in the Phylogenetics and Molecular Evolution team of ISEM. She is supervising the genomic data acquisition phase of the project.
Benoit Nabholz
Lecturer
Benoit is a Lecturer at the University of Montpellier working on evolutionary genomics and molecular evolution. He co-supervised the PhD theses of Rémi Allio and Mathilde Barthe within the ConvergeAnt project.
Mathilde Barthe
PhD Student
Mathilde earned her Master Degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Montpellier. She obtained a PhD grant from the Center for the Study of Biodiversity in Amazonia (CEBA) to work on species delimitation using xenarthran genomes generated by the ConvergeAnt project.
PROJECT ALUMNI
Matthieu Chombart
Master student (January 2023 - June 2023)
Matthieu was a master student of the Institut Agro Montpellier. His project aimed at comparing diverse indexes of genomic differentiation in order to provide a comparative taxonomic framework for mammals.
Mariana Escobar Rodriguez
Master student (January 2022 - June 2022)
Mariana was a master student of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology (MEME). Her project explored the comparative genomics and transcriptomics of mucin genes in mammals with a focus on the salivary gland of myrmecophagous species.
Sérgio Ferreira Cardoso
Phd Student and Post-doc (October 2016-January 2021)
Sérgio's PhD and subsequent post-doc project focused on understanding the convergent evolution of skull shape and dental reduction in ant-eating mammals. His project heavily relied on collecting 3D morphometric data using CT-scans on museum specimens hosted in international collections.
Currently working at the European Commission (Luxembourg).
Timothée Kastylevsky
Master Student (January 2021- June 2021)
Timothée was a Master student from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure (ENS) Lyon co-supervised with Marie Sémon. His project was looking at molecular convergence in non-coding regions of tooth genes in both rodents and ant-eating mammals.
Currently PhD Candidate at ENS Lyon (Lyon, France).
Yin Xun Tan
Master Student (September 2019-February 2020)
Yin Xun "Zach" was a master student of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology (MEME). His project compared patterns of phylosymbiosis among gut, oral, and skin microbiomes in mammals.
Currently PhD candidate at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).
Amandine Magdeleine
Research Assistant (October 2018-October 2020)
Amandine worked as a research assistant in molecular biology. She was in charge of organizing the samples and producing the molecular data of the genomic and microbiome tasks of the project.
Christopher A. Emerling
Post-doc (September 2017-September 2018)
Chris was a post-doctoral fellow from the European Prestige programme for international mobility for a year. His project investigated patterns of convergent gene loss in mammalian genomes in relation to dietary adaptation.
Currently Assistant Professor at Reedley College (Reedley, USA).
Dave Lutgen
Master Student (January 2019-June 2019)
Dave was a student of the Darwin Master Programme in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (M2 BEE) of the University of Montpellier. His project focused on comparative transcriptomics of salivary glands in placental mammals.
Currently PhD candidate at University of Bern (Bern, Switzerland).
Kathleen Garland
Master Student (March 2018-February 2019)
Kathleen was a master student of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology (MEME). During her stay in the ConvergeAnt team, she worked on two distinct projects (M1 & M2) related to bitter taste evolution in placental genomes and on the evolution of morphological structures involved in olfaction in ant-eating mammals, respectively.
Currently PhD candidate at Monach University (Melbourne, Australia).
Rachid Koual
Research Assistant (April 2017-June 2018)
Rachid assisted in producing the molecular data for the project. He more specifically coordinated transcriptome sequencing and made library constructions for shotgun sequencing.
Currently R&D technician at Sanofi (Lyon, France).
Mark Wright
Master Student (September 2017-February 2018)
Mark was a student of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology (M2 MEME). His project investigated the structure and function of turbinals in convergent lineages of ant-eating placental mammals.
Currently PhD candidate at Harvard University (Boston, USA).
Ana Maria Moreau
Master Student (March-August 2017)
Ana Maria defended her Master degree (M2 DTEC-Bio) at the University of Montpellier on the molecular characterization of the ant-eating diet applying metabarcoding and metagenomic approaches to fecal samples collected in the field.
Victor Luxey
Master Student (January 2021- June 2021)
Victor was a second year Master student from the Master program in Bioinformatics of the University of Bordeaux. His project consisted in studying chitinase genes in mammalian fecal metagenomes.
Rémi Allio
PhD Student and Post-doc (October 2017 - December 2021)
Rémi's PhD and Post-doc projects investigated the extent of convergent molecular evolution in the genomes and transcriptomes of myrmecophagous mammals.
Now Researcher at INRAe (Montpellier, France).