Dr. Robert Horvath

Research Interests:

In contrast to short-lived plants, long lived trees such as oaks experience strong environmental oscillations and effects of climate change during their long lifetime. Hence, evolutionary processes that act on a population scale via allele frequency shifts over multiple generations are likely too slow to mitigate the effects of rapid environmental and climate changes at such long lived trees are exposed to. Epigenetic modifications, in addition to phenotypic plasticity, might provide trees with additional response mechanisms to biotic and abiotic stress at intermediate time scales and help tree to acclimatize to such rapidly emerging challenges. In my research, I am interested in understanding how the methylome of clonal oaks is affected by various factors such as biotic and abiotic stresses, propagation methods and grafting. Investigating such variations in the methylome of clonal oaks will allow us to get a better understanding on the role that epigenetic modifications play in long lived species when it comes to coping with the effects of climate change.

Publikationen

A list of all my publications can be found here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=U9evFmUAAAAJ&hl=en

Curriculum Vitae

Since 2024

PostDoc in the Heer lab at the Chair of Forest Genetics, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

2021-2023

PostDoc in the Roulin lab at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

2020-2021

PostDoc in the Ross-Ibarra lab at the Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, USA

2016-2020

PhD in Ecology and Evolution in the Slotte Lab at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

2013-2016

MSc in Biology with major in Ecology and Evolution, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

2009-2013

BSc in Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland