Ecosystems are highly dynamic and submit to the variation of a set of biotic and abiotic parameters. Sometimes variations, which can have a natural or human origin, can induce a state of physiological stress in organisms, altering their development and life cycle and impacting Darwinian fitness (i.e. survival and reproduction).
Insects are the taxon the most abundant and diversified in term of both species number and type of environment occupied in the world. These make insects species potentially exposed to a set of very variables stressing factors. In addition, because of their small size and the lack of body temperature regulation, insects are more influence by fluctuations of their local environments than other species. They have thus developed a wide panel of ecophysiological responses of which the efficiency directly influences their biology, ecology and evolution. Insect's life spans are globally short and rearing conditions easy to develop in small rooms, which allow to easily study stress responses over generations and examine epigenetic responses.
Briefly, my researches aim to (1) study relationship between species and their environments; (2) examine norm of reaction (i.e. how environmental variations influence species life, performances, morphology, etc.); and (3) ways by which species challenge and/or survive stessful environment. In particular, using distinct omics tools including metabolomic (GC-MS; GC-FID; UPLC; GCxGC-TOF/MS ...), proteomic (2D-DIGE) and transcriptomic (RNAseq) I combine informative and complementary data to sweep the global species' adjustments occurring in response to stress. I also highlight biomarkers that reveal (1) the level of physiological stress in species and/or (2) stress resistance/tolerance ecophysiological mechanisms.
Research
Work overview
Behind the pure academic interests of these researches, results directly ensue by my work can :
1/ improve our understanding of species with economic, social and health interests, thus improving methods of control in fields;
2/ allow the use of physiological markers of stress for the identification of stress level and/or chemical contamination in species;
3/ be directly transpose to mammal stress studies as many physiological mechanisms are conserved in animals (e.g. lipidogenesis, steroïd synthesis...). For instance, it can be transpose to human obesity study, as lipid storage/metabolism is one of the most common stress response observed in species;
4/ and so one more...
Why insects are great models for stress physiology research ?
Extrapolate my insect researches to other organisms!
As said previously, many physiological processes use by insects to challenge stress are conserved among animals, including mammals, nematoda, archea, and also plants (e.g. TSPO proteins). Therefore, using our knowledge in insects, we can ask if universal stress markers exist in animals helping to better and quickly stress identification in species. This will have many applications such as, for e.g. the improvments of meat contamination detection (see projects section).
That's me!
Entomology / Insect Sciences
Ecology/Physiology/Toxicology
