Karolina defends PhD

On Wednesday ,18th of January 2023, Karolina defended PhD thesis entitled Genetic predictors and fitness consequences of male attractiveness in the guppy Poecilia reticulata. In her PhD, Karolina conducted an experiment on the Caribbean island – Tobago in which she investigated indirect benefits of mate choice in a semi-natural population of guppies. Karolina investigated whether male traits known to be associated with attractiveness predict number of grandoffspring, a preferable but rarely tested measure of fitness. Moreover, she examined if males of high reproductive success have more grandoffspring despite potential intra-locus sexual conflict, and finally she searched for ‘good genes’ by investigating two potential candidates – multilocus heterozygosity and Major Histocompatibility Complex genes as predictors of male fitness, epigamic traits, and parasite load.