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

Prof. Nadir Alvarez, nadir.alvarez@ville-ge.ch, +41224186456

Dr. Jeremy Gauthier, jeremy.gauthier@ville-ge.ch, +41224186456

Inés Carrasquer, PhD candidate, ines.carrasquer@ville-ge.ch, +41224186456

Topics: Population Genomics, Museomics

Insect species belonging to the order Ephemeroptera are known to be bioindicators of aquatic environments. During the 20th century, anthropic activities have particularly impacted these habitats: destruction of natural river beds, pollution, temperature change, etc. These rapid changes have certainly had an impact on the insect populations associated with these environments. Thanks to new DNA capture methods (e.g. HyRAD) it is now possible to access genetic information from historical specimens sampled since the beginning of the 20th century and preserved in museum collections. The study of these samples at the scale of Switzerland, in 2 ephemeropteran species that are particularly well represented in terms of spatial and temporal series, will make it possible to directly trace back the dynamics of their populations, quantifying the decline in their genetic diversity, the size of their effective population and estimating the evolution of their genetic structure over time.