The Power of Novelty: How Mitochondrial Diversity and Video Games Can Shape the Way We Think About Evolution

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore questions related to mitonuclear ecology, sexual selection, the maintenance of genetic variation, and biology education. In my first two chapters, I use cybrid laboratory populations of Callosobruchus maculatus, a seed beetle (introgressed genomes originating from disparate ancestral sources in southern India and Burkina Faso) to investigate questions related to the interplay between the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. In chapter 1, I test whether the genomic interplay between the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes facilitates the maintenance of genetic variation. I find that when two mitochondrial haplotypes are present in a population, that population maintains greater stability in additive genetic variance than populations with only a single mitochondrial haplotype present. In my second chapter, I investigate the effects of interactions between the mitochondrial genome and the nuclear genome of eukaryotic organisms and how the interplay between the two genomes influences mate choice preferences in populations of these beetles. I find that C. maculatus demonstrate a preference for individuals whose mitochondrial haplotype originates from the same population as their own. In my third and final chapter, I investigate the effectiveness of video games as a teaching tool for use in undergraduate courses aiming to teach evolution, and to this end, I develop a video game designed to accurately represent evolution by natural selection. I test this tool’s efficacy by evaluating more than 900 Auburn University undergraduate students’ knowledge of evolution, as measured through a validated concept inventory, before and after thirty minutes of gameplay. I find that students do significantly improve their understanding of evolution on average after playing as compared to students who played either a simple (evolution-free) version of the same game or no game at all over those same thirty minutes. In sum, I ask novel questions about how mitochondrial diversity influences the evolutionary trajectories of populations, and I test new approaches to teaching the all-important subject of evolution.