Joseph Parker
California Institute of Technology, CA·Ecology & Evolution
How does a free-living animal evolve into a partner that cannot survive without another species? Symbiotic relationships, from gut microbes to parasites, shape human health.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
Neuroscience
- Topics
symbiosis
rove beetles
Staphylinidae
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2031
What they work on
- Compare free-living and ant-associated rove beetles to trace how new cell types and biosynthetic pathways let beetles chemically defend against ants or manipulate ant behavior.
- Determine how changes in pheromone production, the making of chemical signals, help symbiotic rove beetles integrate into ant colonies and avoid rejection by their hosts.
- Investigate the chemosensory mechanisms, meaning the smell and taste senses, that symbiotic rove beetles use to find and recognize host ant colonies.
- Test whether epistatic interactions, in which symbiotic traits depend on one another, make the shift to obligate symbiosis irreversible in rove beetles.
- Genetically engineer a free-living rove beetle to carry symbiont-like traits and test which changes unlock the ant-colony niche and promote dependence on the host.
More about the research
Yet little is known about how such lifestyles arise at the level of genes, cells and nervous systems. Rove beetles (family Staphylinidae) offer a rare natural experiment. Many separate beetle lineages have independently shifted from living on their own to living as specialized guests inside ant colonies, and they depend on those colonies completely. Because this shift happened so often, the beetles let researchers retrace the evolutionary steps behind a complex but repeatable form of symbiosis.
Why it matters
Symbiotic relationships run through human biology, from harmful and helpful microbes to parasitic and domesticated animals. This work could explain how such relationships arise and become locked in at the molecular and cellular level. That basic understanding could eventually inform how researchers approach pathogens and beneficial microbes in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Duane McKenna
University of Memphis, TN·Ecology & Evolution
Reconstruct the first comprehensive phylogeny of longhorned beetles using more than 500 nuclear genes from over 600 species, collected by anchored hybrid enrichment sequencing and supported by genomes of key species.
Timothy Linksvayer
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Ecology & Evolution
Identify the gene regulatory networks that control the development of obligate sterility in ant workers, which completely lack reproductive organs.
Randi Rotjan
Tufts University, MA·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how symbiotic state, from nearly algae-free white colonies to algae-rich brown ones, affects reproductive investment in the Northern Star Coral Astrangia poculata.
The school
California Institute of Technology: 18 labs on PI Pages, $445M a year on research, 200 research doctorates a year.
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