Invertebrates section
Museum of natural history of the City of Geneva
Muséum d’histoire naturelle de la Ville de Genève
Route de Malagnou, 1
1208 Genève

Inés Carrasquer ines.carrasquer@ville-ge.ch , en co-supervision avec Prof. Nadir Alvarez nadir.alvarez@unige.ch +41224186456

Topics: Population genomics, Conservation biology

According to the last red list published by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, 40% of the 105 well-documented Orthoptera species present in Switzerland are considered as threatened. Given the key role they play in ecological processes, Orthoptera species are thus of major concern for Swiss conservation policies. Nonetheless, at the subspecies level there are several pending questions, particularly dealing with the contact zone between populations. Such is the case for Platycleis albopunctata albopunctata and P. a. grisea; Metrioptera roeselii and M. fedtschenkoi minor or even within the complex Chorthippus mollis. In this project, the aim will be to analyze the population genomics of these subspecies using a new multi-locus barcode method developed for Orthoptera. Our aim is (1) to address the state of populations in terms of genetic diversity and (2) to test for admixture between them.