Isabel Almudi (University of Barcelona) has obtained an ERC Consolidator Grant 2021. Her project mayFLYeye (The evolution of new organs during insects’ conquest of the sky) will study the origin of wigs and the turbinate eyes of mayfly males, a sex-specific visual system that helps males to locate mate partners while flying.

Isabel is from Zaragoza, Spain. She moved to Barcelona to study Biology at the University of Barcelona, where she stayed to do her PhD on Drosophila melanogaster (fruitfly) eye development. After her PhD, she did a short postdoctoral stay in Zurich (Switzerland) to investigate the signalling networks involved in growth control and organ size in D. melanogaster. In 2012, she moved to Oxford (UK) to expand her knowledge in Developmental Genetics to Evolutionary Biology, Genomics and Bioinformatics. She worked at the McGregor lab, at Oxford Brookes University, where she used species closely related to Drosophila to investigate the genetic basis of eye size evolution. In 2015 she obtained a Marie Sklowdoska-Curie fellowship from the EU that allowed her to move to the Andalusian Centre for Developmental Biology in Seville (Spain). Last year, she obtained a Beatriz Galindo group leader position at the University of Barcelona, where she established her laboratory. Her research focuses on the evolution of mayflies (Ephemeroptera), an order of successful winged insects.

Which are the main objectives of mayFLYeye?

Insects are the most numerous and diverse group of animals on Earth. They appeared more than 400 million years ago, but it was only after they evolved wings that they greatly diversified. The main goal of mayFLYeye is to investigate the origin of novel organs that facilitated this extraordinary radiation. We will study the origin of wings, which are the initial morphological novelty that promoted the conquest of new ecological niches and the turbinate eyes of mayfly males, which are a sex-specific novel visual system that helps males to locate mate partners while flying.

Why did you decide to carry out your research at the University of Barcelona?

The Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics at the University of Barcelona offers a privileged research environment with an excellent international community at one of the best universities in Spain.

In addition, this department has been particularly successful in nurturing and fostering the scientific careers of its PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, many of them having consolidated their careers as successful group leaders worldwide. This is especially so in the case of the so-called “Barcelona Evo-Devo School”. This group was started by leading experts in the field (Jaume Baguñá, Emili Saló, Pere Martínez, Jordi García-Fernández, etc.) and includes more than 12 former PhD students who have become successful PIs in different national and international institutions such as University of Barcelona (UB, Barcelona, Spain), IBE-CSIC (Barcelona, Spain), Centre for Genomic Regulation, CRG (Barcelona, Spain), University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK), Queen Mary University of London (London, UK), Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, UK) and University of Bristol (Bristol, UK) among others.

How do you expect this grant will affect your professional career?

I will be able to consolidate an ambitious and innovative research project, pushing forward my current research towards new functional analyses and single-cell genomic and transcriptomic approaches. These approaches will secure the consolidation and long-lasting use for the entire research community of C. dipterum as an experimental model and resource not only to understand the evolution of new traits in insects but also to investigate how they conquered and adapted to aerial, aquatic and land environments.

Are you planning to open research positions in your group?

Yes, the ERC-CoG grant will allow me to hire two experienced researchers (postdocs) with expertise in bioinformatics, single-cell and/or -omics approaches, two technicians to assist with the experimental work, and one PhD student with interest in understanding the evolution of winged insects and the appearance of new organs.

Are you planning any collaborations?

Yes, the project has planned strategic collaborations with other labs with expertise in related fields, such as the Solana lab, at Oxford Brookes University, with great experience in single-cell -omics, and Derka (Check Republic), Salles (Brazil) and Nieto (Argentina) labs, which help us with the aims related to diversity and ecology of mayflies. We will also collaborate with Dr de la Villa and Dr Méndez, experts in electrophysiology located in Spain.

Where can we learn more about you and your project?

Website: https://www.mayflyecoevodevo.com/
Email: ialmudi@ub.edu
Twitter: @IsabelAlmudi
Posts I wrote when we published the genome of our mayfly species: https://ecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/mayflies-take-off-a-new-model-to-study-insect-evolution?channel_id=521-behind-the-paper and https://thenode.biologists.com/mayflies-an-emergent-model-to-investigate-the-
evolution-of-winged-insects/research/

Selected publications

Genomic adaptations to aquatic and aerial life in mayflies and the origin of insect wings., Almudi, I., Vizueta, J., Wyatt, C.D.R., et al. Nature Communications 11, 2631 (2020)

Establishment of the mayfly Cloeon dipterum as a new model system to investigate insect evolution, Almudi, I., Martin-Blanco, C.A., Garcia-Fernandez, I.M., et al. Evodevo 10, 6. (2019)

During the following weeks, we will be presenting those researchers working at Spanish institutions that have obtained an ERC Starting or Consolidator Grant 2021 and their projects. You can check their profiles HERE.