Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

Statistical method for testing the neutral mutation hypothesis by DNA polymorphism.

So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Human biochemical genetics

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

The genetic effects of pleistocene ice ages are approached by deduction from paleoenvironmental information, by induction from the genetic structure of populations and species, and by their combination to infer likely consequences. (1) Recent palaeoclimatic information indicate rapid global reversals and changes in ranges of species which would involve elimination with spreading from the edge. Leading edge colonization during a rapid expansion would be leptokurtic and lead to homozygosity and spatial assortment of genomes. In Europe and North America, ice age contractions were into southern refugia, which would promote genome reorganization. (2) The present day genetic structure of species shows frequent geographic subdivision, with parapatric genomes, hybrid zones and suture zones. A survey of recent DNA phylogeographic information supports and extends earlier work. (3) The grasshopperChorthippus parallelusis used to illustrate such data and processes. Its range in Europe is divided on DNA sequences into five parapatric races, with southern genomes showing greater haplotype diversity — probably due to southern mountain blocks acting as refugia and northern expansion reducing diversity. (4) Comparison with other recent studies shows a concordance of such phylogeographic data over pleistocene time scales. (5) The role that ice age range changes may have played in changing adaptations is explored, including the limits of range, rapid change in new invasions and refugial differentiation in a variety of organisms. (6) The effects of these events in causing divergence and speciation are explored usingChorthippusas a paradigm. Repeated contraction and expansion would accumulate genome differences and adaptations, protected from mixing by hybrid zones, and such a composite mode of speciation could apply to many organisms.

https://www.fc.up.pt/mestr_biodiv/aulas/hewitt_1996.pdf

Some genetic consequences of ice ages, and their role in divergence and speciation

Is it time to abandon the biological species concept? No.

Sexual conflict occurs because males are selected to produce as many offspring as possible, even if this means lowering the overall reproductive output of individual females. A new model proposed by Gavrilets1 suggests that strong asymmetries between males and females in the costs and benefits of mating will create runaway coevolution between the sexes, promoting rapid divergence between populations and hence speciation. This is an intriguing possibility, not least because it runs counter to existing models2 which suggest that greater sexual conflict will result in males mating more indiscriminately, breaking down reproductive barriers between divergent populations. One reason for this difference is that the new model is based on the idea that females can avoid costs of mating if they are incompatible with some males, whereas we suggest that in reality this may rarely be the case.

Sexual conflict and speciation

Courtship song is known to vary among several groups of closely related species ofDrosophila. The present study investigates differences in song among four members of thequinaria group of fungal-breedingDrosophila which are known to coexist in Britain and the near-continent. Results show that the species can be distinguished by several song parameters including interpulse interval.D. phalerata is very different from the other three species, while there is considerable overlap betweenD. kuntzei andD. limbata in several characters.D. transversa appears to be more similar to the latter species than it is toD. phalerata. The question of mate choice and the potential for reproductive character displacement are discussed.

Differences in male courtship song among the species of thequinaria group ofDrosophila

Chromosomal inversions contribute widely to adaptation and speciation, yet they present a unique evolutionary puzzle as both their allelic content and frequency evolve in a feedback loop. In this simulation study, we quantified the role of the allelic content in determining the long-term fate of the inversion. Recessive deleterious mutations accumulated rapidly on both arrangements with most of them being private to a given arrangement. The emerging overdominance led to maintenance of the inversion polymorphism and strong non-adaptive divergence between arrangements. The accumulation of mutations was mitigated by gene conversion but nevertheless led to the fitness decline of at least one homokaryotype. Surprisingly, this fitness degradation could be permanently halted by the branching of an arrangement into multiple highly divergent haplotypes. Our results highlight the dynamic features of inversions by showing how the non-adaptive evolution of allelic content can play a major role in the fate of the inversion.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/04/13/606012.full.pdf

Muller’s Ratchet and the Long-Term Fate of Chromosomal Inversions

Background: Despite the recent sequencing of seven ant genomes, no genomic data are available for the genus Formica ,a n important group for the study of eusocial traits. We sequenced the transcriptome of the ant Formica exsecta with the 454 FLX Titanium technology from a pooled sample of workers from 70 Finnish colonies. Results: About 1,000,000 reads were obtained from a normalised cDNA library. We compared the assemblers MIRA3.0 and Newbler2.6 and showed that the latter performed better on this dataset due to a new option which is dedicated to improve contig formation in low depth portions of the assemblies. The 29,579 contigs represent 27 Mb. 50% showed similarity with known proteins and 25% could be assigned a category of gene ontology. We found more than 13,000 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms. The D9 desaturase gene family is an important multigene family involved in chemical communication in insects. We found six D9 desaturases in this Formica exsecta transcriptome dataset that were used to reconstruct a maximum-likelihood phylogeny of insect desaturases and to test for signatures of positive selection in this multigene family in ant lineages. We found differences with previous phylogenies of this gene family in ants, and found two clades potentially under positive selection. Conclusion: This first transcriptome reference sequence of Formica exsecta provided sequence and polymorphism data that will allow researchers working on Formica ants to develop studies to tackle the genetic basis of eusocial phenotypes. In addition, this study provided some general guidelines for de novo transcriptome assembly that should be useful for future transcriptome sequencing projects. Finally, we found potential signatures of positive selection in some clades of the D9 desaturase gene family in ants, which suggest the potential role of sequence divergence and adaptive evolution in shaping the large diversity of chemical cues in social insects.

/pdf/transcriptome-characterisation-of-the-ant-formica-exsecta-3itfe7e6hh.pdf

Roger K. Butlin

Papers

Is it time to abandon the biological species concept? No.

Sexual conflict and speciation

Differences in male courtship song among the species of thequinaria group ofDrosophila

Muller’s Ratchet and the Long-Term Fate of Chromosomal Inversions

Transcriptome characterisation of the ant Formica exsecta with new insights into the evolution of desaturase genes in social hymenoptera.