My research focuses on the effects of adaptive and non-adaptive forces on the evolution of genome architecture in animals. More precisely, my thesis aims at defining the general applicability of the Mutational Hazard Hypothesis by investigating whether and how systematically animal genome size is impacted by variation of effective population size (Ne). Moreover, I am interested in the dynamics of transposable elements evolution and in understanding how their expansion and insertion patterns relate to genome size and ancestral Ne.
For addressing these biological questions, I am using comparative and population genomic approaches in a diverse range of taxa, including Asellidae isopods, passerine birds, Drosophila flies, swallowtail butterflies, and ants – that due to their ecology underwent repeated decreases of Ne and for which new genomic resources are generated in the context of the project – as well as other animal groups whose data are available from public repositories.