Scott McCairns
Post-doc
Profile
I completed my MSc. under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Hutchings at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada). My research involved studying life history trade-offs associated with countergradient variation in growth. For a number of reasons, this project is still ongoing.....my suspicion is a deep-seeded desire to return to the back-country of beautiful Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland!
For my PhD I moved to Université Laval in the “capitale nationale du Québec” to study with Dr. Louis Bernatchez. This represented my first real foray into the realm of molecular ecology, and like a kid a toy store, I attempted to try every new tool at my disposal (microsatellites, MHC sequencing and quantitative PCR). These molecular tools proved indispensible in allowing me to explore the effects of environmental variation on population structuring and adaptive differentiation between parapatric threespine stickleback demes.
Although I’m quite fond of saying that the actual organism or system doesn’t matter as long as the underlying question is interesting, my CV suggests an inordinate fondness for fishes. And though I had the best of intentions to get away from Gasterosteus, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join EGRU and work on some very interesting questions using this model.
Research
My research interests are somewhat diverse, but all seem to circle around the theme of adaptive evolution in contemporary populations. I am particularly drawn to the interplay between environmental and genetic sources of phenotypic variance which seem to define a continuum between adaptive differentiation and effectively neutral, plastic variation. Most intriguing is the role that phenotypic plasticity may play during the course of a species’ adaptation to novel and/or changing environments. Currently, I am exploring the utility of transcriptomic data to address these themes (among others...).
Publications
Scott's publications can be found from TUHAT database.
Page updated 22.03.2012