Yi-Chiao Chan

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Department of Primatology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

phone: +49 341 3550 249
fax: +49 341 3550 299
e-mail: yichiao_chan[>>> Please replace the brackets with an AT sign <<<]eva.mpg.de

 

Current research

While all of the modern great apes exist as distinct, geographically-discontinuous species, gibbons are unique among hominoids in comprising multiple closely-related species recently living in close geographic proximity to one another. However, our understanding of the evolutionary relationships of the various gibbons, especially in genus Hylobates, is still very limited. In my PhD research, I aim to use large amounts of DNA sequence data, generated by next-generation sequencing technology, to estimate the times of divergence, the extent of gene flow, and the phylogenetic relationships among different gibbon species.

I am particularly interested in the comparison of information from maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA and paternally-inherited Y-chromosomes to detect potential sex-specific differences in gibbon evolutionary histories. Recently, based on the sequences of near complete mitochondrial genomes, we recovered the first well-supported phylogeny of the Hylobates and revealed the timings of the divergence events in this gibbon lineage.

 

The work is funded by: