Paul Battlay

• BSc, MS
• PhD Student at University of Melbourne

Adaptation is a critical determinant of the diversification, persistence, and geographic range limits of species. Yet the genetic basis of adaptation is often unknown and potentially underpinned by a wide range of mutational types—from single nucleotide changes to large-scale alterations of chromosome structure. Copy number variation (CNV) is thoug...

When introduced to multiple distinct ranges, invasive species provide a compelling natural experiment for understanding the repeatability of adaptation. Ambrosia artemisiifolia is an invasive, noxious weed, and chief cause of hay fever. Leveraging over 400 whole-genome sequences spanning the native-range in North America and 2 invasions in Europe a...

Genomics has revolutionised the study of invasive species, allowing evolutionary biologists to dissect mechanisms of invasion in unprecedented detail. Botanical research has played an important role in these advances, driving much of what we currently know about key determinants of invasion success (e.g. hybridisation, whole‐genome duplication). De...

When introduced to multiple distinct ranges, invasive species provide a compelling natural experiment for understanding the repeatability of adaptation. Ambrosia artemisiifolia is an invasive, noxious weed and chief cause of hay fever. Leveraging over 400 whole-genome sequences spanning the native range in North America and two invasions in Europe...

Observations of genetically repeated evolution (repeatability) in complex organisms are incongruent with the Fisher-Orr model, which implies that repeated use of the same gene should be rare when mutations are pleiotropic (i.e., affect multiple traits). When spatially divergent selection occurs in the presence of migration, mutations of large effec...

Adaptation is a critical determinant of the diversification, persistence, and geographic range limits of species. Yet the genetic basis of adaptation is often unknown and potentially underpinned by a wide range of mutational types – from single nucleotide changes to large-scale alterations of chromosome structure. Copy number variation (CNV) is tho...

Human activities are accelerating rates of biological invasions and climate-driven range expansions globally, yet we understand little of how genomic processes facilitate the invasion process. Although most of the literature has focused on underlying phenotypic correlates of invasiveness, advances in genomic technologies are showing a strong link b...

White clover (Trifolium repens L.; Fabaceae) is an important forage and cover crop in agricultural pastures around the world and is increasingly used in evolutionary ecology and genetics to understand the genetic basis of adaptation. Historically, improvements in white clover breeding practices and assessments of genetic variation in nature have be...

Background White clover (Trifolium repens L.; Fabaceae) is an important forage and cover crop in agricultural pastures around the world, and is increasingly used in evolutionary ecology and genetics to understand the genetic basis of adaptation. Historically, improvements in white clover breeding practices and assessments of genetic variation in na...

Adaptation is the central feature and leading explanation for the evolutionary diversification of life. Adaptation is also notoriously difficult to study in nature, owing to its complexity and logistically prohibitive timescale. Here, we leverage extensive contemporary and historical collections of Ambrosia artemisiifolia—an aggressively invasive w...

Background: The adaptive significance of polyploidy has been extensively debated, and chromosome-level genome assemblies of polyploids can provide insight into this. The Australian grass Bothriochloa decipiens belongs to the BCD clade, a group with a complex history of hybridization and polyploid. This is the first genome assembly and annotation o...

Invasive species are a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis, but the drivers of invasiveness, including the role of pathogens, remain debated. We investigated the genomic basis of invasiveness in Ambrosia artemisiifolia (common ragweed), introduced to Europe in the late 19th century, by resequencing 655 ragweed genomes, including 308 herbar...

Biological invasions offer a unique opportunity to investigate evolution over contemporary time‐scales. Rapid adaptation to local climates during range expansion can be a major determinant of invasion success, yet fundamental questions remain about its genetic basis. This study sought to investigate the genetic basis of climate adaptation in invasi...

The adaptive significance of polyploidy has been extensively debated and chromosome level genome assemblies of non-model polyploids can provide insight into this topic. The Australian grass, Bothriochloa decipiens, belongs to the BCD clade, a group with a complex history of hybridization and polyploidy. We sequenced, assembled and annotated a chrom...

Adaptation is the central feature and leading explanation for the evolutionary diversification of life. Adaptation is also notoriously difficult to study in nature, owing to its complexity and logistically prohibitive timescale. We leverage extensive contemporary and historical collections of Ambrosia artemisiifolia —an aggressively invasive weed a...

Biological invasions offer a unique opportunity to investigate evolution over contemporary time-scales. Rapid adaptation to local climates during range expansion can be a major determinant of invasion success, yet fundamental questions remain about its genetic basis. This study sought to investigate the genetic basis of climate adaptation in invasi...

While invasive species are a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis, the drivers of invasiveness remain debated. To investigate the genomic basis of invasiveness in plants, we use the invasive weed Ambrosia artemisiifolia , introduced to Europe in the late 19 th century, resequencing 655 ragweed genomes, including 308 herbarium specimens coll...

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is among the most widely studied organisms, but relatively little is known about its natural ecology. Genetic diversity is low across much of the globe but high in the Hawaiian Islands and across the Pacific Rim. To characterize the niche and genetic diversity of C. elegans on the Hawaiian Islands and to explore...

A unique aspect of metabolic detoxification in insects compared to other animals is the presence of xenobiotic phosphorylation, about which little is currently understood. Our previous work raised the hypothesis that members of the taxonomically restricted ecdysteroid kinase-like (EcKL) gene family encode the enzymes responsible for xenobiotic phos...

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is among the most widely studied organisms, but relatively little is known about its natural ecology. Wild C. elegans have been isolated from both temperate and tropical climates, where they feed on bacteria associated with decomposing plant material. Genetic diversity is low across much of the globe but high in...

Observations of genetically repeated evolution (repeatability) in complex organisms are incongruent with the Fisher-Orr model, which implies that repeated use of the same gene should be rare when mutations are pleiotropic (i.e., affect multiple traits). When spatially divergent selection occurs in the presence of migration, mutations of large effec...

Biological invasions are accelerating, and invasive species can have large economic impacts as well as severe consequences for biodiversity. During invasions, species can interact, potentially resulting in hybridization. Here, we examined two Cakile species, C. edentula and C. maritima (Brassicaceae), that co‐occur and may hybridize during range ex...

Phosphorylation is a phase II detoxification reaction that, among animals, occurs near exclusively in insects, but the enzymes responsible have never been cloned or otherwise identified. We propose the hypothesis that members of the arthropod-specific ecdysteroid kinase-like (EcKL) gene family encode detoxicative kinases. To test this hypothesis, w...

The capacity to detoxify toxic compounds is essential for adaptation to the ecological niches of many organisms, especially insects. However, detoxification in insects is often viewed through the lens of mammalian detoxification research, even though the organ and enzyme systems involved have diverged for over half a billion years. Phosphorylation...

Significance Around the world insecticides are being deregistered and banned, as their environmental costs are deemed too great or their efficacy against pest insects is reduced through the evolution of insecticide resistance. With the introduction of replacement insecticides comes the responsibility to assess the way new insecticides perturb vario...

Imidacloprid, the world’s most used insecticide, has caused considerable controversy due to harmful effects on non-pest species and increasing evidence showing that insecticides have become the primary selective force in many insect species. The genetic response to insecticides is heterogeneous across populations and environments, leading to more c...

Imidacloprid, the world's most utilised insecticide has raised considerable controversy due to its harmful effects on non-pest species and there is increasing evidence showing that insecticides have become the primary selective force in many insect species. The genetic response to insecticides is heterogeneous across population and environment, lea...

Insecticide resistance is a paradigm of microevolution and insecticides are responsible for the strongest cases of recent selection in the genome of Drosophila melanogaster . Here we use a naïve population and a novel insecticide class to examine the ab initio genetic architecture of a potential selective response. Genome wide association studies o...

If we are to fully comprehend the evolution of insect diversity at a genomic level we need to understand how natural selection can alter genetically encoded characters within populations. Genetic association panels have the potential to be standard bearers in this endeavour. They enable the mapping of phenotypes to genotypes at unprecedented resolu...

Patterns of nucleotide polymorphism within populations of Drosophila melanogaster suggest that insecticides have been the selective agents driving the strongest recent bouts of positive selection. However, there is a need to explicitly link selective sweeps to the particular insecticide phenotypes that could plausibly account for the drastic select...

Patterns of nucleotide polymorphism within populations of Drosophila melanogaster suggest that insecticides have been the selective agents driving the strongest recent bouts of positive selection. However, there is a need to explicitly link selective sweep loci to the particular insecticide phenotypes that could plausibly account for the drastic se...

Insecticide resistance is an economically important example of evolution in response to intense selection pressure. Here, the genetics of resistance to the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid is explored using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel, a collection of inbred Drosophila melanogaster genotypes derived from a single population in Nort...

Insecticide resistance is considered a classic model of microevolution, where a strong selective agent is applied to a large natural population, resulting in a change in frequency of alleles that confer resistance. While many insecticide resistance variants have been characterized at the gene level, they are typically single genes of large effect i...

Insecticide resistance is an economically important example of evolution in response to intense selection pressure. Here, the genetics of resistance to the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid is explored using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel, a collection of inbred Drosophila melanogaster genotypes derived from a single population in Nort...

Scans of the Drosophila melanogaster genome have identified organophosphate resistance loci among those with the most pronounced signature of positive selection. In this study the molecular basis of resistance to the organophosphate insecticide azinphos-methyl was investigated using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel and genome-wide association...

We map 114 gene gains and 74 gene losses in the P450 gene family across the phylogeny of twelve Drosophila species by examining the congruence of gene trees and species trees. While the number of P450 genes varies from 74-94 in the species examined, we infer that there were at least 77 P450 genes in the ancestral Drosophila genome. One of the most...

Insecticide resistance is one of the most prevalent examples of anthropogenic genetic change, yet our understanding of metabolic-based resistance remains limited by the analytical challenges associated with rapidly tracking the in vivo metabolites of insecticides at nonlethal doses. Here, using twin ion mass spectrometry analysis of the extracts of...