Subhash Rajpurohit

Biography

Dr. Subhash Rajpurohit is a member of the Division of Biological & Life Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad since August 2017 as Assistant Professor. He obtained his M.Sc. in Zoology from Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur and a Ph.D. in Bioscience from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak. In his Ph.D. work he studied thermal adaptations in Indian drosophilids, and then began a postdoctoral fellowship (2008-2012) at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, USA and University of Georgia-Athens, USA. His postdoctoral work included studies of functional genomics of a desert fly in the arid lands of the southwestern USA and northwestern Mexico, Drosophila mojavensis, from several transcriptome experiments involving host cactus specialization, mating status, desiccation and thermal physiology. In 2009, he established a long-term artificial selection experiment on body pigmentation in D. melanogaster. For the last five years (2012-2017), he has been working as a Research Associate in the Dept. of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, USA. His most recent work has spanned studies of latitudinal clines, seasonality, and rapid adaptation in D. melanogaster. He has discovered five more clines for desiccation tolerance, cuticular hydrocarbons, pigmentation, body size, and thermal preferences in natural populations of D. melanogaster along the east coast of the USA, and is tracking seasonal dynamics in mesocosms in order to elucidate effects of temperature increases. He has also developed a three-dimensional thermal gradient apparatus for temperature preference studies in smaller size organisms like Drosophila, wasps, and mosquitos. He has been involved in using Indian drosophilids as a natural laboratory of evolutionary biology and leading long-term studies on tropical Indian drosophilids. His lab also hosts a resource on Indian Drosophila (http://www.indian-drosophila.org/). For more details about his work and ongoing projects visit his Lab page.

Research Interest

Clines, Seasonality, & Rapid Adaptations, Climate & Metabolic Ecology, Urban Evolution