Yichen Liu

PhD student

Background

I obtained my master’s degree in ecology from Beijing Normal University, and my research topic was the biogeographic distribution pattern and evolutionary mechanism of avian hemosporidian parasites.

Project

We focus on the Enemy Release Hypothesis (ERH) and the Parasite Release Hypothesis (PRH), which serves as a specialized extension of the ERH, and try to study and explain these hypotheses from the perspective of viruses. We use the European green crab Carcinus maenas (Linnaeus, 1758), a common crab species in the Wadden Sea, as the model species. We will identify and study the prevalence of viruses across a spatial and temporal scale in the Wadden Sea and globally. These results will be compared with specimens from various locations where the species is invasive to study whether these populations differ in the prevalence of viruses and whether they have transferred symbionts from their native range to the invasive range or acquired novel pathogens.

Funding

My PhD project is supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).