Bio: Sam Fenton (PhD Student)

Sam Fenton is on a studentship supported by Scottish Natural Heritage, MVLS, and IBAHCM. His lead supervisor is Colin Adams and co-supervised by Colin Bean and Kathryn Elmer, and he's been spending a lot of time with us in the roof labs as he gets his feet wet with the genomics.

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My research interest lies in understanding how populations adapt to their local environments. This includes understanding the factors that underlie difference in adaptation across populations of the same species, the underlying genetics of phenotypic variation and adaptation, and the patterns of variation we see on a wide scale.

I did my BSc in Biochemistry and Genetics at the University of Sheffield. While my interest for the course had been in Biochemistry, I quickly found my interests shifting to the genetics and evolution-based modules of the course. This led to my decision to undertake a Master's degree in Evolution and Behaviour at the University of Sheffield after the completion of my BSc. My MRes project focused on local adaptation in the snail species Littorina saxatilis. Specifically, this focused on a 2-month tag-recapture experiment I ran in Sweden to test for divergent selection on putative chromosomal inversions between two ecotypes of the species. 

My PhD project focuses on the adaptive diversity of the salmonid species Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) in Scotland. The species colonised British freshwaters at the end of the Last Glaciation Period (ca. 15,000 years ago) and has undergone an incredible adaptive diversification to the extent where some question if Arctic charr is even a single species. Despite our knowledge of major phenotypic and genetic variation across populations, many populations are still yet to be studied and thus the true extent of variation remains a mystery. In my PhD, I am conducting a national-scale study of Scottish populations to better the patterns of adaptive diversity we see. The main aim of my PhD is to define Evolutionary Significant Units within the species that can be used as management units to better guide conversation policy.





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