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.
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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.
Webpage
Sérgio Ferreira Cardoso
Post-doc
Sérgio's post-doc focuses on understanding the convergent evolution of skull shape and dental reduction in ant-eating mammals. His project relies on collecting 3D morphometric data on museum specimens hosted in international collections.
Rémi Allio
PhD Student
Rémi's PhD project investigates the extent of convergent molecular evolution in the transcriptomes and genomes of myrmecophagous mammals.
Amandine Magdeleine
Yin Xun Tan
Sophie Teullet
Research Assistant
Amandine is a research assistant in molecular biology. She is in charge of organizing the samples and producing the molecular data of the genomic and microbiome tasks of the project.
Master Student
Yin Xun "Zach" is a master student of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology (MEME). His project will compare patterns of phylosymbiosis among gut, oral, and skin microbiomes in mammals.
Master Student
Sophie is a student of the Ecology Master from the Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse). Her project is on the molecular evolution, comparative genomics, and transcriptomics of chitinase genes in 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 is co-supervising the PhD thesis of Rémi Allio within the ConvergeAnt project.
PROJECT ALUMNI
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mathilde Barthe
Master Student (March 2019-June 2019)
Mathilde was a student of the Darwin Master Programme in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (M1 BEE) of the University of Montpellier. Her project consisted in detecting convergent evolution in the genomes of myrmecophagous carnivorans.