Evolutionary Biology
A graphical summary of my most recent paper
In July 2021, I joined the Lind Lab at Umeå University (Sweden) as a postdoctoral fellow supported generously by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I am currently working on two distinct projects:
1. To forecast the evolution of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria by empirically determining mutation biases across diverse resistance mechanisms and mapping them to their fitness effects [model organism: Pseudomonas aeruginosa]
2. To determine if phenotypic plasticity can prime bacteria for the evolution of a multicellular lifestyle [model organisms: Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus]
I am an alumnus of the Population Biology Lab (PBL) at IISER Pune (India) where I spent more than a decade under the guidance of Sutirth Dey (I began as an undergrad trainee in 2010, continued as a PhD student, earned my doctorate in 2019, and worked as a postdoc until June 2021). During my time at PBL, I became fascinated by the interactions of mutation, drift and selection in organismal populations. I was (and still am) particularly captivated by the complexity that underlies the process of adaptation in seemingly simple asexual systems.
At PBL, I used combinations of bacterial experimental evolution, population-wide genomics, and agent-based simulations to study the following:
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The effects of population size on adaptation and fitness trade-offs
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The population genetics of divergent character evolution in identical environments
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How and why the costs of adaptation are shaped by the interactions of population size and environmental fluctuations
Curriculum Vitae
Peer-reviewed publications
1. Chavhan, Y., Malusare, S. & Dey, S.
Interplay of population size and environmental fluctuations: A new explanation for fitness cost rarity in asexuals
Ecology Letters 24, 1943–1954 (2021)
2. Chavhan, Y., Malusare, S. & Dey, S.
Larger bacterial populations evolve heavier fitness trade-offs and undergo greater ecological specialization.
Heredity 124, 726–736 (2020)
Companion article
3. Chavhan, Y., Karve, S. & Dey, S.
Adapting in larger numbers can increase the vulnerability of Escherichia coli populations to environmental changes.
4. Chavhan, Y., Ali, S. I. & Dey, S.
Larger numbers can impede adaptation in asexual populations despite entailing greater genetic variation.
Evolutionary Biology 46, 1–13 (2019)
5. Karve, S., Daniel, S., Chavhan Y., Anand, A., Kharola, S.S. & Dey, S.
Escherichia coli populations in unpredictably fluctuating environments evolve to face novel stresses through enhanced efflux activity.
PhD Thesis
The Effects of Population Size on Adaptation and Trade-offs: Insights from Experimental Evolution with Escherichia coli and Individual-based Models
(Defended on September 6, 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Sutirth Dey at IISER Pune)
The May 2020 Heredity Podcast featuring my work
My talk at the Indo-Swiss Meeting on Evolutionary Biology (Dec 2019)
