EFFECTS OF THE PARASITE PARVILUCIFERA SP. ON DINOFLAGELLATE LIFE CYCLE STRATEGIES

-Parasites may have given birth to sex-

This sentence summarizes an evolutionary theory based on the «Red Queen Hypothesis», named after Lewis Carroll, and which predicts that a prey has to evolve when a predator evolves just for both to keep on running. Otherwise, the game is over. In this sense, sexuality and fast molecular changes are tightly coupled. Our studies aim to study how the parasite Parvilucifera sp. affects asexual- sexual shifts in dinoflagellates, and to identify if sexual reproduction constitutes an important strategy for dinoflagellates against the infection.

Project of I. Bravo and  R. I. Figueroa