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I am an Envision PhD student interested in understanding evolutionary processes across populations and species, at phenotypic and genotypic levels.

• MSc: Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics
  Queen Mary University of London,
• BSc: Biological Sciences (Evolutionary Biology)
  University of Edinburgh,

For my PhD, I aim to understand better the causes and consequences of novel adaptation. To do this I am investigating repeated adaptation of Silene uniflora (Sea campion) populations to heavy-metal contaminated soils across the UK.

I aim to understand the role of plasticity in facilitating novel adaptation in S. uniflora, as well as whether hybridisation has intorduced novel variation during novel adaptation. I also aim to investigate the population history of parallel adaptation in S. uniflora.  I will integrate both genomic and experimental data to help investigate these topics.

2025

• Published
  Coates, S., Comeault, A., Wood, D. P., Fay, M. F., Creer, S., Osborne, O., Dunning, L. T. & Papadopulos, A. S. T., 4 Feb 2025, In: PNAS. 122, 5, p. e2409541122 e2409541122.
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

For my Masters dissertation, I worked with researchers from Queen Mary University and Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, to study the genomics of ash tree responses to ash dieback disease. I used signals of convergent evolution between multiple pairs of ash species to detect potential loci associated with resistance to the disease.