CNRS · ISEM · Montpellier

Camille Roux

Presentation

My scientific path started in Lille, where I completed my PhD with Xavier Vekemans and Vincent Castric between 2007 and 2010, in the laboratory of Genetics and Evolution of Plant Populations. The work focused on speciation in Arabidopsis, especially between A. halleri and A. lyrata, and on the evolution of heavy-metal accumulation. We showed that divergence between these species coincided with a major tandem triplication involved in the ability of A. halleri to hyperaccumulate zinc.

A second line of the PhD examined the genomic consequences of balancing selection around the self-incompatibility locus, one of the strongest known examples of long-term balancing selection. Despite this intense selection, its genomic footprint remained highly localized.

I then joined the Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution de Montpellier for a postdoc with Nicolas Bierne and Nicolas Galtier (2011–2013), based at the marine station in Sète. There, the main focus was a striking case of introgression between two Ciona species that remain able to produce viable and fertile hybrids despite being roughly fourteen times more divergent than humans and chimpanzees.

From 2013 to 2016, I worked in Lausanne with John Pannell, first on methodological approaches for high-throughput sequencing data in polyploids, then on how plant metapopulation dynamics shape the evolution of reproductive systems. Since 2017, I have been a CNRS researcher, in Lille until 2025 and now at ISEM in Montpellier.

Lille
Lille
Sète
Sète
Lausanne
Lausanne

My work seeks to understand the dynamics of the speciation process: when the first barriers to gene flow arise, and when genomes eventually become fully impermeable to gene flow. To address these questions, I combine population genomics, demographic inference, and comparative analyses.

This work currently develops along three connected axes.

Speciation genomics

Estimating genetic connectivity and reproductive isolation from genomic data, especially along the grey zone between populations and species.

Methods and inference

Developing and applying ABC-based tools such as DILS to compare models of divergence, estimate gene flow, and account for linked selection.

Comparative approaches

Comparing species pairs and clades to ask whether reproductive isolation accumulates at different rates across biological systems.

Current questions

A recent comparative analysis across hundreds of species pairs (Science, 2025) found that plant lineages tend to be less genetically connected than animal lineages at comparable molecular divergence. That result is one anchor for ongoing work, and a starting point for asking which biological features accelerate or slow barrier accumulation.

  • Why do lineages differ in the rate at which barriers to gene flow accumulate?
  • How does genetic connectivity decline with molecular divergence?
  • Which genomic compartments and biological features contribute to reproductive isolation?
  • Can population-scale estimates of reproductive isolation be compared across clades?
  • Do evolutionary radiations coincide with faster declines in gene flow between closely related species?

Selected work

Tools and approaches

Method development is part of how I work: ABC-based frameworks turn comparative questions about gene flow and reproductive isolation into quantities that can be estimated and compared across datasets. Code and tools are available on GitHub, including DILS.

Contact

Camille Roux

CNRS researcher

Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution de Montpellier

Montpellier, France

camille.roux@cnrs.fr