Federico Déborah

Research  The goal of my PhD is to study non-genetic inheritance and its consequences in evolution. The first part of my work is experimental: I am studying mate-choice copying in Drosophila melanogaster, a type of social learning in which individuals learn the preferences of conspecifics in terms of mates and make their own choice according to what they socially learned. As a consequence of this behaviour, a theoretical prediction is the emergence of lasting cultural traditions in drosophila populations, through the transmission of socially learned preferences across generations. One of my goal will be to test this prediction. The second part of my PhD is theoretical, with both modelling and philosophical aspects. Using results on cultural transmission in drosophila, I will build a model to make predictions about its evolutionary consequences on the long run. I also want to work on a generic evolutionary model including all the channels of inheritance (genetic, epigenetic, cultural, environmental…), and to study the new concept of heredity that is emerging at the present time. During this 3 years at EDB, I am supervised by Arnaud Pocheville, a philosopher of science.
Training  Master of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Burgundy, France.