Bastien Llamas
Dr Bastien Llamas is a University of Adelaide Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), who has recently been awarded an ARC Future Fellowship. He specialises in the analysis of ancient DNA extracted from past human populations and extinct animals to address outstanding questions in evolutionary biology. Dr Llamas' current projects at ACAD target several topics in evolutionary biology, including: 1) The role of epigenetic change, where gene expression is regulated in the absence of changes to the DNA sequence, in animals' adaptation (specifically bison) to rapid climate oscillations that occurred during the last Ice Age. 2) The evolutionary history of bison populations using genomic data from specimens that lived up to 100,000 years ago. 3) The genetic consequences of colonisation on the immune system of indigenous societies, with a focus on the dramatic South American population collapse after European colonisers introduced new Old World diseases. 4) The migration history of anatomically modern humans and the reconstruction of major peopling events across the globe. 5) The molecular evolution of extinct Australian marsupials.
Abstracts this author is presenting: