I am a third-year Ph.D. student at Nanyang Technological University, co-supervised by both Asst Prof Jun Ying Lim (National University of Singapore) and Asst Prof Jarkko Salojärvi (Nanyang Technological University). I graduated with a Bachelor in Biological Science from NTU in 2020. I am a plant bioinformatician by training, and my current research interests lie at the intersection of ecology and genomics to understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of lowland dipterocarp forests in Southeast Asia. To this end, I am employing metagenomics, population genomics, and comparative genomics to understand eco-evolutionary processes governing tropical forest dynamics
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Genomic insights into the demographic history of tropical plant assemblages in Southeast Asia in response to past sea level change
J. J. NGIAM, J. SALOJÄRVI, J. Y. LIM
School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 60 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637551
Eco-evolutionary processes strongly shape the abundance and diversity of species in local populations. Yet, the response of ecological communities to such changes is not immediate, which hinders the study of historical population dynamics. Recent coalescent models enable the modelling of population demography from whole genome sequencing data, but it is not known how well their predictions agree with conventional biogeographic modelling. The tropical flora of South-East Asia (SEA) represents an ideal system to test this connection.
Sea-level changes throughout the Quaternary have resulted in large fluctuations SEA land covers, to the extent of periodical separation and connection of the islands across the Sunda shelf. However, our understanding of the historical legacies of present-day forest communities is limited due to the lack of temporal resolution and generalizability. Here, we generated long-read genome assemblies of six focal taxa with different life-history traits and sequenced populations of twenty individuals each. We hypothesize a positive relationship between the historical population sizes of all six taxa to available land area. Also, we hypothesize that early-successional pioneer species will have a faster population recovery rate than later-successional species. A better understanding of community-wide population change to sea level will help us better predict how tropical ecosystems may respond to future climate change.