Population Genomics of Neurospora in North America

The filamentous Ascomycete, Neurospora, has served as a model organism for genetics, cell biology, and genomics. More recently, collections of Neurospora from natural populations have also served as a model systems for population genomics and the study of evolution. However, while the genus Neurospora contains species diverse in their habitat, ecology, and lifecycle, the study of natural populations of Neurospora has been limited to the narrow set of species that make mitotic spores called conidia. We seek to understand how a species' ecology affects it's evolutionary trajectory by comparing the evolutionary trends of the diverse members of this genus. To this end, we have collected populations of diverse species of Neurospora from across North America and sequenced their genomes. We employ the tools of phylogenomics to understand how the genomes of these species differ from one another, and population genomics to understand how each species' traits shape its population.