Mulin Huan ’26, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Mulin Huan ’26

Major

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Project Title

Competition-induced Evolution in a Seasonal Environment

Though we have a good understanding of how the environment shapes evolution and competition, it remains unclear how rapid evolution in response to environmental changes affects competition between species. I worked on an experimental evolution project in fruit flies that aims to shed light on this process. For this project, I helped to set up 170 mesocosms consisting of monocultures and two-species mixtures with four different fruit fly species. We tracked the rapid phenotypic evolutions that these flies exhibited throughout the summer months and manipulated the treatment mixture mesocosms weekly as we replaced all newly emerged flies in these mesocosms with the same amount of similarly aged individuals of each species from the monoculture mesocosms. Through this, we hope to gain a better understanding of how fly species that evolve with and without interspecific competition compete with each other. I hope to elaborate on some aspects of this project as part of my junior independent work. Aside from ecological knowledge, I’ve gained a new understanding of the importance of organization and planning. I believe these takeaways will help me tremendously as I pursue a research career that delves into similar topics.

* This internship is connected to the HMEI Biodiversity Grand Challenges project, “The Maintenance of Species Diversity through the Rapid Evolution of Competitive Ability.”