Ecology, Ecosystems and Coastal Management

Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics

Ecologists and evolutionary biologists now routinely use next-generation DNA sequencing in their research, and graduates who are skilled in genome analysis as well as ecology and evolution are rare. Genome-enabled approaches are helping rapidly to advance our understanding of the dynamic relationship between genotype, phenotype and the environment. Our programme will give you cross-disciplinary skills in a rare combination of areas of expertise, from bioinformatics and evolutionary inference to computational biology and fieldwork. The power of genetics which has been bolstered in the past decade by a broad range of genomic tools in dissecting basic cellular and developmental processes is undisputed. It has also been increasingly exploited to understand the interaction between different organisms, particularly between pathogens and their hosts. Because of the technological investments required, genetic and genomic approaches have, however, traditionally been applied only to a small set of carefully chosen model species.