LEAE, UniNE (Switzerland) - Russell Naisbit

Russell Naisbit
Post-Doc

Phone: (+41) 32 718 31 33
Fax: (+41) 32 718 30 01

I'm interested in the processes that generate biodiversity, leading to local adaptation and ultimately speciation.
So far I've been lucky enough to work in the tropics and the alps. My PhD was on neotropical butterflies, studying the sister species pair Heliconius cydno and H. melpomene. Their speciation seems to have been driven by ecological divergence under disruptive natural selection. Both are unpalatable, warningly coloured and mimic different species of Heliconius. Speciation was associated with this shift in mimicry since it affected mate choice, leading to assortative mating, and produced selection against hybrids due to their intermediate non-mimetic patterns. They have also diverged in microhabitat and host plant use, and show female hybrid sterility (a Haldane's rule effect) and disruptive sexual selection against hybrids.
Currently I'm investigating patterns of host use in Oreina elongata and the influence of larval performance and predation on the evolution of diet breadth. This alpine leaf beetle is found in isolated populations in France, Italy and Switzerland, with differences between sites in the availability of four host plants. We use lab and field experiments to test the extent to which this variability has led to local adaptation of host preference, performance, and chemical defence.

Since 2002	Postdoc with Prof Martine Rahier, University of Neuchâtel
1997 to 2001	PhD thesis with Prof James Mallet at University College London and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama "Ecological divergence and speciation in Heliconius cydno and H. melpomene"
1993 to 1996	BA Biological Sciences First Class Honours, Oxford University

Naisbit, R.E., Jiggins, C.D., and Mallet, J. (in press). Mimicry: developmental genes that contribute to speciation. Evolution and Development.

Naisbit, R.E., Jiggins, C.D., Linares, M., Salazar, C., and Mallet, J. (2002). Hybrid sterility, Haldane’s rule and speciation in Heliconius cydno and H. melpomene. Genetics, 161: 1517-1526.
Download (pdf, 112 Ko)

Jiggins, C.D., Linares, M., Naisbit, R.E., Salazar, C., Yang, Z.H., and Mallet, J. (2001). Sex-linked hybrid sterility in a butterfly. Evolution, 55: 1631-1638.
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Jiggins, C.D., Naisbit, R.E., Coe, R.L., and Mallet, J. (2001). Reproductive isolation caused by colour pattern mimicry. Nature, 411: 302-305.
Download (pdf, 216 Ko)

Naisbit, R.E., Jiggins, C.D., and Mallet, J. (2001). Disruptive sexual selection against hybrids contributes to speciation between Heliconius cydno and Heliconius melpomene. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond., B 268: 1849-1854.
Download (pdf, 296 Ko)