Roger K. Butlin

TL;DR: The formation of new animal species often results from divergence in male sexual behaviours and female preferences but the genetic basis of this sexual isolation in fruitflies is gradually being revealed.

TL;DR: An intron in the arginine kinase gene (Ark) is sequenced, which shows strong clinal variation between two locally adapted ecotypes of the flat periwinkle, Littorina fabalis, suggesting a gene duplication in Ark.

TL;DR: The features of the snail system facilitate the study of local adaptation and speciation and its genomic basis, but the underlying evolutionary processes are expected to be similar in other organisms, and hence this species is a useful model.

TL;DR: This work analysed the distribution of amino acid sites in GRs and ORs that show evidence for divergence under either positive selection or relaxed purifying constraints, in the genomes of 12 Drosophila species and found significant differences between these two receptor types, suggesting that insect ORs and GRs have distinct molecular properties and mechanisms of ligand recognition and/or signal transduction.

TL;DR: The grasshopper species Chorthippus brunneus and C. jacobsi form a hybrid zone in northern Spain but cannot be reliably distinguished on the basis of characteristics of the karyotype such as heterochromatin banding patterns and composition, as revealed by C-banding and fluorochrome staining.