Bréa SIMOES-BERTON

My Trombi

Supervisors:
directeur : Hervé COLINET   herve [dot] colinetuniv-rennes1 [dot] fr
co-directeur : GIBERT PATRICIA <Patricia [dot] Gibertuniv-lyon1 [dot] fr>

Starting date of PhD: 01/09/2021

The recent invasion by the Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) is a major concern for the fruit sector worldwide. Temperature and thermal biology of this species are recognized as the main factors dictating the distribution, populations’ dynamics and seasonal phenology of SWD. However, major knowledge gaps remain regarding its thermal and seasonal ecology, thus compromising the assessment and prediction of field population dynamics from year to year. Small insects such as fruit flies certainly respond to environmental variations on much finer temporal and spatial scales than those generally considered so far in classical experimental studies and predictive models. My thesis will generate and integrate fine-scale information from both experimental and field observation data to better define SWD's thermal ecology. We assume that rapidly fluctuating temperatures (from hours to hours), such as daily natural thermoperiods, allow both development and survival under conditions that with constant temperatures would normally be lethal. Changes over longer time scales (from season to season) may also trigger some specific adaptations. We assume that the most critical bottleneck periods for SWD persistence is the winter and thus some unknown phenotypic and physiological adaptive strategies must be used during this period.

Thème : Écologie du stress, Écotoxicologie