John Paul Foxe

TL;DR: The hypothesis that selfing was favored during colonization as new habitats emerged after the last glaciation and the expansion of agriculture is supported and suggests that natural selection for reproductive assurance can lead to major morphological evolution and speciation on relatively short evolutionary timescales.

TL;DR: It is shown, using comparative data, that highly selfing plants have genomes significantly smaller than those of outcrossing relatives, consistent with reduced activity and spread of repetitive elements in inbred plants.

TL;DR: Nucleotide diversity in six natural populations of Arabidopsis lyrata was studied, finding evidence of population divergence over the past 19,000 to 47,000 years involving non-equilibrium demographic events that reduced the effective size of most populations.

TL;DR: It is implied that both positive and purifying selection are more effective in C. grandiflora than in A. thaliana, consistent with the contrasting demographic history and effective population sizes of these species.

TL;DR: Examination of nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequences and microsatellite variation in a large sample of populations of Arabidopsis lyrata from the Great Lakes region of Eastern North American does not suggest a single transition to selfing in this system, as has been suggested for some other species in the Brassicaceae.