Guillaume, Frédéric, Dr.

Research

My research focuses on theoretical questions in evolutionary and quantitative genetics. I am interested in understanding how species adapt to their environment despite intrinsic and extrinsic genetic constraints. Intrinsic constraints may arise from genetic correlations among traits. Pleiotropy of the genes underlying an adaptation is thought to be key in determining its level of constraint. I am thus interested in knowing how pleiotropy vary among genes and how the structure of the genotype-phenotype map contribute to genetic correlations among quantitative traits. Extrinsic sources of constraints may come from variation in environment among populations connected by gene flow. I have investigated, in collaboration with Mike Whitlock and Sam Yeaman at UBC, how the processes of migration, selection, and mutation interact in determining the level of adaptation of quantitative traits in structured populations.

Other areas of my research include the study of the dynamics of deleterious mutations in structured populations. Spontaneous mutations are usually thought to be slightly detrimental to the individuals that carry them and are prone to accumulation in populations of small size causing the mean population fitness to decrease, a phenomenon known as the "mutation load". This load can be too heavy to carry for species with small and poorly connected populations and lead to their extinction following a process known as the "mutational melt down" of the populations. In collaboration with Julie Jaquiéry and Nicolas Perrin, we have shown how the use of simple statistics such as Fst can help predict the risks of mutation accumulation. If inbreeding is the key mechanism by which mutations slowly accumulate (or are purged under certain conditions) and thus decrease individual fitness, selection is likely to favor inbreeding avoidance mechanisms. Dispersal is such a mechanism. I have thus been interested in how dispersal might evolve in order to avoid to mate with relatives and how the presence of deleterious mutations may select for increased dispersal and/or sex-biased dispersal strategies.

I am approaching these topics using a mixture of computational and mathematical modeling approaches. Over the years since my PhD, I have developed an individual-based, genetically explicit simulation framework called Nemo. Nemo is an open-source free software distributed under the GNU Public License. It can simulate the simultaneous evolution of several traits such as neutral markers, dispersal, deleterious mutations, and multivariate quantitative traits in a metapopulation framework.

Publications

click here to access the complete list

CV

2009-present: Junior group leader (SNF-Ambizione Fellow), ETH Zürich, Switzerland
2005-2009: Postdoc (with Michael Whitlock), UBC, Vancouver, Canada
2005-2005: Research associate (with Jerome Goudet), UNIL, Lausanne, Switzerland
2001-2005: PhD (with Nicolas Perrin), UNIL, Lausanne, Switzerland
2000-2001: MSc (with Nicolas Perrin), UNIL, Lausanne, Switzerland