Melissa Diaz-Morales

I am Melissa Díaz-Morales. I am from Costa Rica, where I obtained a BS in Biology and a specialization degree in Botany, both from the University of Costa Rica (UCR), where I also worked as a researcher at the Lankester Botanical Garden and as a professor in the Biology School. Currently, I am a Doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Center next Generation Insect Chemical Ecology (nGICE) under the supervision of Dr Bill S Hansson and Dr Markus Knaden from the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology at the MPI-CE and Dr Martin Andersson at Lund University, Sweden. Using the transgenic expression of olfactory receptors with the empty neuron system in D. melanogaster, and the posterior measurement of electrophysiological responses through single sensillum recordings to previously identified sex pheromones, I am investigating how pheromone receptors coevolve to match the high diversity of sexual pheromones. In the project:

Evolution of sex-pheromone receptors in Drosophila flies