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Chaymae Fennine
PhD student (Nov. 2020 - )
Chaymae.Fennine@natec.unibz.it
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Title "Determination of tephritids olfactomes: a
bridge towards understanding fruit flies ecology and
evolution"
Phytophagous insect species show specialized feeding habits.
They rely basically on their olfactory system for host
selection, following an array of stimuli. Many of tephritid
fruit flies show considerable overlap in fruit preferences,
even if their ecological niche is clearly different.
However, it remains unclear how this host shift or
specialization is occurring as well as the phenomena by
which it has been driven. This PhD project aims to collect
olfactory responses of five species of Tephritidae family
towards synthetic blends, composed by shared volatiles
compounds. These data will be acquired through a set of
electrophysiological and behavioral experiments, in order to
determine and analyze the olfactomes of these species and
provide comparative information about their tuning in
ecological and phylogenic contexts. These olfactory
sensitivities will be included in the 'Olfactomics database'
(cross-species database for quantitative antennal responses
in Tephritidae family) in order to be publicly available for
fundamental and applied research fields. This project is a
part of Olfactomics project and it is done in collaboration
with Tephrigroup of the Department of Plant Protection
Biology of Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
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