Rongfeng Cui(崔荣峰)

I grew up in Canton, China. I received my bachelor's degree in 2008 at the biology department of Sun Yat-sen University (中山大學). My bachelor's degree thesis was on taxonomy and morphometrics of gobies (Perciformes, Gobiidae) in south China. I got my PhD from Texas A&M university in 2014, supervised by Gil Rosenthal. My main research interests include animal communication, signal-receptor coevolution, prezygotic isolation mechanisms and sympatric speciation. Current projects focus on the effect of early learning in female mate choice in X. malinche, historical hybridization in Xiphophorus and QTL mapping of olfactory preferences using admixed hybrids. Cross-fostering experiments in cichlids had shown that early learning experience, especially olfaction, affected mate preference. Furthermore, assortative mating based on phenotypic discrimination may facilitate linkage disequilibrium between subgroups within the same population and may have implications in early sympatric speciation. I found that X. malinche females avoided familiar olfactory phenotypes in mate choice, in direct contrast with their sister species X. birchmanni. Early learning also has different effects in the olfactory and the visual modalities. Compared to other sensory modalities, olfactory receptors are presumably less constraint by natural selection due to high copy numbers and rapid duplication rates facilitated by retrotransposon elements, which allow evolution of private signaling channels. Previous studies in the swordtail system showed that females attend to water-soluble male olfactory cues during courtship, and they discriminate against heterospecific odors. Collaborating with the chemistry department at TAMU, we're we're trying to isolate and identify possible pheromones from the simulating water produced by the courting males combining behavioral trials, HPLC and mass spectrometry.