KLI Colloquia are invited research talks of about an hour followed by 30 min discussion. The talks are held in English, open to the public, and offered in hybrid format.
Fall-Winter 2025-2026 KLI Colloquium Series
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923
25 Sept 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
A Dynamic Canvas Model of Butterfly and Moth Color Patterns
Richard Gawne (Nevada State Museum)
14 Oct 2025 (Tues) 3-4:30 PM CET
Vienna, the Laboratory of Modernity
Richard Cockett (The Economist)
23 Oct 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
How Darwinian is Darwinian Enough? The Case of Evolution and the Origins of Life
Ludo Schoenmakers (KLI)
6 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Common Knowledge Considered as Cause and Effect of Behavioral Modernity
Ronald Planer (University of Wollongong)
20 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Rates of Evolution, Time Scaling, and the Decoupling of Micro- and Macroevolution
Thomas Hansen (University of Oslo)
4 Dec (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Chance, Necessity, and the Evolution of Evolvability
Cristina Villegas (KLI)
8 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations
Enrico Petracca (KLI)
15 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty
Patricia Beldade (Lisbon University)
29 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)
Event Details
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923
Topic description / abstract:
When we study genotype-phenotype maps, we are mostly focusing on the relationship between genetic variation and the average trait value per genotype. However, there is mounting evidence that phenotypic variance can be understood as a trait on its own, with potentially independent genetic regulation and evolutionary trajectories, when compared to the mean trait value. In this talk, we will focus on Drosophila melanogaster populations exposed to different dietary conditions, and discuss to which extent phenotypic variance in response to environmental changes (i.e., phenotypic robustness) is genetically regulated, whether it propagates across different layers of the G-P map, and under which conditions it could evolve.
Biographical note:
Luisa Pallares was born in Ocaña, a city in the north east of Colombia, and got her Bachelors degree in Biology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. Then, with a fellowship from the Max-Planck Research School for Evolutionary Biology (IMPRS), she moved to Plön, Germany, where she did her PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, under the supervision of Diethard Tautz. Later on, with a Long-Term Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Human Frontiers Science Program (HFSP) she moved to Princeton University in the US where she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Ayroles Lab affiliated to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.
Since February 2022, she leads the Max Planck Research Group on “Evolutionary Genomics of Complex Traits.” Her research group is located in the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society (FML) and the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen (Germany).
