Mercedes Sánchez defended her TFM -Trabajo Fin de Máster- with great success.
In her Master Thesis entitled “The nectar microbiome in simpatric and allopatric populations of the genus Erysimum” she reported that species ascription is more important that simpatry/alopatry in explaining differences in the microbioma present in the flower nectar.
Mercedes did this research using several species of the wallflower genus Erysimum, from which she managed to extract and amplify DNA from bacterias inhabiting the nectar. After genomic analyses using Illumina MiSeq, she demonstrated that the microbioma of the nectar is more similar between individuals of the same Erysimum species in allopatry than between individuals of different species inhabiting the same place (sympatry).
This research have been performed in the Departments of Genetics and Ecology under the supervision of Isabel Reche & Francisco Perfectti