A central goal of modern biological research is to understand the ecological drivers and genetic basis of evolutionary change in organisms, which is important to address a number of fundamental questions in biology. For instance, how many mutations are responsible for rapid adaptation to novel environments? What are the mechanisms responsible for major behavioural and phenotypic changes in animals, and can we predict how species will adapt to global climate change? Our major goal is to understand the evolutionary and ecological processes underlying adaptive evolution. We address two broad questions:

1. What evolutionary and ecological factors govern the evolution of bacterial genomes, and how often do the observed patterns reflect adaptive (vs. stochastic) evolution?

2. What evolutionary and ecological factors govern insect adaptation to new resources?

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