Mardulyn

phone: +32 (0)2 650 26 49

e-mail: Patrick.Mardulyn@ulb.be

Personal website

Research interests

Our research interests concern the use of molecular markers to study the evolution of organisms. Our work focuses on intra-species genetic variation and its geographic distribution, within species (i) to infer the evolutionary histories of populations and species at different time scales, including those associated with past climate changes, (ii) to estimate the dispersal capacity of organisms and (iii) to study speciation at the molecular level. Our work involves the development of models that mimic biological processes in natural populations for the purpose of testing hypotheses over their evolutionary history. The ultimate goal is to gain insights into the evolution of diversity in natural populations, with a strong focus on insects.

Some current research projects:

‣Analyzing genetic/genomic variation, using coalescence models, to study the evolution of the geographic ranges of several European leaf beetles over time in response to past climate changes that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene
‣Analyzing genetic/genomic variation with spatially explicit models of population evolution to study the ability of insects to disperse
‣Speciation genomics: studying barriers to reproduction and the impact of hybridization on the transfer of genes between sister species of leaf beetles.

Selected recent publications

Kastally C, Dellicour S, Hardy O J, Gilbert M, Mardulyn P (2021) Estimating migration of Gonioctena quinquepunctata (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) inside a mountain range in a spatially explicit context. Insect Systematics and Diversity 5, 8.

Lukicheva S, Mardulyn P (2021) Whole genome sequencing reveals asymetric introgression between two sister species of cold-resistant leaf beetles. Molecular Ecology 30, 4077-4089.

Lukicheva S, Flot J-F, Mardulyn P (2021) Genome assembly of the cold-tolerant leaf beetle Gonioctena quinquepunctata, an important resource for studying its evolution and reproductive barriers between species. Genome Biology and Evolution 13, evab134.

Kastally C, Trasoletti M, Mardulyn P (2019) Limited gene exchange between two sister species of leaf beetles within a hybrid zone in the Alps. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 32, 1406-1417.

Kastally C, Mardulyn P (2017) Widespread co-occurrence of two distantly related mitochondrial genomes in individuals of the leaf beetle Gonioctena intermedia. Biology Letters 13, 20170570.

Quinzin MC, Normand S, Dellicour S, Svenning J-C, Mardulyn P (2017) Glacial survival of trophically linked boreal species in northern Europe. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, 20162799.

Branders V, Mardulyn P (2016) Improving intraspecific allele networks inferred by maximum parsimony. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 7, 90-95.

Mayer F, Piel, FB, Cassel-Lundhagen A, Kirichenko N, Grumiau L, Økland B, Bertheau C, Grégoire J-C, Mardulyn P (2015) Comparative multi-locus phylogeography of two Palaearctic spruce bark beetles: influence of contrasting ecological strategies on genetic variation. Molecular Ecology 24, 1292-12310.

Quinzin, M, Mayer F, Elvinger N, Mardulyn P (2015) Theoretical expectations of the Isolation-Migration model of population evolution for inferring demographic parameters. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 6, 610-620.

Dellicour S, Michez D, Rasplus J-Y, Mardulyn P (2015) Impact of past climatic changes and resource availability on the population demography of three food-specialist bees. Molecular Ecology 24, 1074-1090.

Dellicour S, Kastally C, Hardy OJ, Mardulyn P (2014) Comparing phylogeographic hypotheses by simulating DNA sequences under a spatially explicit model of coalescence. Molecular Biology and Evolution 31, 3359-3372.

Dellicour S, Fearnley S, Lombal A, Heidl S, Dahlhoff E, Rank N, Mardulyn P (2014) Inferring the past and present connectivity across the range of a North American leaf beetle: combining ecological-niche modeling and a geographically explicit model of coalescence. Evolution 68, 2371-2385.

Dellicour S, Mardulyn P (2014) SPADS 1.0: a toolbox to perform spatial analyses on DNA sequence data sets. Molecular Ecology Resources 14, 647-651.

Dellicour S, Mardulyn P, Hardy OJ, et al. (2014) Inferring the mode of colonization of the rapid range expansion of a solitary bee from multilocus DNA sequence variation. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 27, 116-132.

Quinzin MC, Mardulyn P (2014) Multi-locus DNA sequence variation in a complex of four leaf beetle species with parapatric distributions: mitochondrial and nuclear introgressions reveal recent hybridization. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 78, 14-24.

Mardulyn P, Goffredo M, Conte A, et al. (2013) Climate change and the spread of vector-borne diseases: using approximate Bayesian computation to compare invasion scenarios for the bluetongue virus vector Culicoides imicola in Italy. Molecular Ecology 22, 2456-2466.

Mardulyn P (2012) Trees and/or networks to display intraspecific DNA sequence variation? Molecular Ecology 21, 3385-3390.

full list of publications...

Team