Louise Brousseau
Achievements
Zoom on "high-resolution" adaptation
Microgeographic habitat patchiness and the fine grain of adaptation in Amazonia
Despite increasing interest for the state and future of biodiversity in Amazonia, we still know little about the recent microevolution and the role of adaptation. Through my early career, I documented the process of adaptation in Neotropical trees including the hyperdominant tree Eperua falcata and the species complex Symphonia sp.
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A series of studies provided preliminary evidence of local adaptation to selective pressures operating across multiple scales. They indicate that microgeogarphic adaptation to fine-grained habitat patchiness is an important driver of genomic and phenotypic divergence in wild populations of Amazonia.
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2020. Dick, C.W, A genomic perspective on Amazon tree diversity. Molecular Ecology.
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From the Cover. 2020. Brousseau L, et al. Genomic and phenotypic divergence unveil microgeographic adaptation in the Amazonian hyperdominant tree Eperua falcata Aubl. (Fabaceae). Molecular Ecology.
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2020. Tysklind N, et al. Microgeographic local adaptation and ecotype distributions: the role of selective processes on early life history traits in sympatric, ecologically divergent Symphonia populations. Ecology and Evolution.
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2015. Brousseau L, Foll M, Scotti-Saintagne C, Scotti I. Neutral and adaptive drivers of microgeographic genetic divergence within continuous populations: the case of the Neotropical tree Eperua falcata (Aubl.). PLOS ONE.
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2013. Brousseau L, et al. Highly local environmental variability promotes intra-population divergence of quantitative traits: an example from tropical rainforest trees. Annals of Botany.
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2013. Audigeos D, et al. Molecular divergence in tropical tree populations occupying environmental mosaics. Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
"Omics" resources in Amazonia :
Next-Generation !
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As part of my research activities, I contribute to fill the gap of observational "omics" data in wild populations of non-model species. Next-generation genomic and transcipromic data I produce are available on EMBL to promote Open Science and knowledge sharing. I also design and encode custom bioinformatics pipelines to meet the specific needs of various research questions. I support collaborators and students to carry out bioinformatics analyses of massive sequencing data (de novo assembly, mapping, SNP calling, functional and structural annotation) and obtain high-quality FAIR datasets.
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2020. Dick, C.W, A genomic perspective on Amazon tree diversity. Molecular Ecology.
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From the Cover. 2020. Brousseau L, et al. Genomic and phenotypic divergence unveil microgeographic adaptation in the Amazonian hyperdominant tree Eperua falcata Aubl. (Fabaceae). 'From the Cover' in Molecular Ecology.
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2020. Brousseau L, et al. Historical Genomics. In G. Odonne & JF Molino (Ed.), Methods in Historical Ecology : Insights from Amazonia. Routeledge.
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2014. Brousseau L, et al. High-throughput transcriptome sequencing and preliminary functional analysis in four Neotropical tree species. BMC Genomics
Unexpectedly Idiosyncratic
Altitudinal adaptation in European firs
Local adaptation does not always go in the expected direction, and sometimes, it goes in every direction! This resumes a counter-intuitive lesson learned from the European Silver fir (Abies alba) in its Southern distribution range.
To the hypothesis : "Is altitudinal adaptation replicated across moutain massifs?", the answer is probably "no" as we did not detect any replicated pattern of selective divergence across mountains distributed from the Pyrenees to the Balkan peninsula. Rather, populations from different genetic pools adapted differently to altitudinal gradients, indicating a possible influence of the biogeographic history of this species in mediating altitudinal adaptation.
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2016. Brousseau L, et al. Local adaptation in European firs assessed through extensive sampling across altitudinal gradients in southern Europe. PloSOne.
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2017. Piotti A, et al. Unexpected scenarios from Southern European refugial areas: disentangling complex demographic dynamics along the Apennine distribution of silver fir. Journal of Biogeography
Gaming !
Are you serious?
Yes, gaming can be both serious and instructive! I imagined DOMESTIX, a survival card game to apprehend the process of plant domestication :
"Let's try to domesticate a plant population for food, wood, or chemicals...
Will your population survive?"
Through this serious game, the roles of evolutionary drivers (gene flow, genetic drift, natural and artificial selection) are introduced in a friendly and interactive way.
Ongoing projects
The tropical rainforest of Amazonia was long considered as an undisturbed pristine forest, but evidence of long-term pre-columbian disturbances are accumulating. One surprising fact is that pre-Columbian "ring ditch" sites are often enriched in food-producing plant species, feeding the long-standing idea that these plant populations were formerly domesticated and represent the "living legacies" of ancient societies. I tackle this question by exploring the microevolutionary history of useful palms in ancient agroecosystems of Amazonia, with a particular interest for the genera Astrocaryum, Oenocarpus and Euterpe (Arecoïdeae).
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Funded research programs :
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DOPAMICS. PI: Louise Brousseau, "Staring Grant" funded by the European Research Council (€1,560,000). > Visit the webpage
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PalmOmix. PI: Louise Brousseau, Fondation Agropolis, LabEx Agro (€20,000).
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PEPINO. PIs: Louise Brousseau & Guillaume Odonne (CNRS, USR LEEISA), LabEx CEBA (€15,000).
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Overseas and International collaborations :
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CNRS, UAR LEEISA, Cayenne (French Guiana).
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Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Manaus (Brazil)
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University of California, Berkeley (USA)
Publications
