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W. Owen McMillan

Bio: W. Owen McMillan is an academic researcher from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The author has contributed to research in topics: Heliconius & Heliconius erato. The author has an hindex of 49, co-authored 152 publications receiving 9942 citations. Previous affiliations of W. Owen McMillan include University College London & Smithsonian Institution.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
Kanchon K. Dasmahapatra1, James R. Walters2, Adriana D. Briscoe3, John W. Davey, Annabel Whibley, Nicola J. Nadeau2, Aleksey V. Zimin4, Daniel S.T. Hughes5, Laura Ferguson5, Simon H. Martin2, Camilo Salazar6, Camilo Salazar2, James J. Lewis3, Sebastian Adler7, Seung-Joon Ahn8, Dean A. Baker9, Simon W. Baxter2, Nicola Chamberlain10, Ritika Chauhan11, Brian A. Counterman12, Tamas Dalmay11, Lawrence E. Gilbert13, Karl H.J. Gordon14, David G. Heckel8, Heather M. Hines5, Katharina J. Hoff7, Peter W. H. Holland5, Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly15, Francis M. Jiggins, Robert T. Jones, Durrell D. Kapan16, Durrell D. Kapan17, Paul J. Kersey, Gerardo Lamas, Daniel Lawson, Daniel Mapleson11, Luana S. Maroja18, Arnaud Martin3, Simon Moxon19, William J. Palmer2, Riccardo Papa20, Alexie Papanicolaou14, Yannick Pauchet8, David A. Ray12, Neil Rosser1, Steven L. Salzberg21, Megan A. Supple22, Alison K. Surridge2, Ayşe Tenger-Trolander10, Heiko Vogel8, Paul A. Wilkinson23, Derek Wilson, James A. Yorke4, Furong Yuan3, Alexi Balmuth24, Cathlene Eland, Karim Gharbi, Marian Thomson, Richard A. Gibbs25, Yi Han25, Joy Jayaseelan25, Christie Kovar25, Tittu Mathew25, Donna M. Muzny25, Fiona Ongeri25, Ling-Ling Pu25, Jiaxin Qu25, Rebecca Thornton25, Kim C. Worley25, Yuanqing Wu25, Mauricio Linares26, Mark Blaxter, Richard H. ffrench-Constant27, Mathieu Joron, Marcus R. Kronforst10, Sean P. Mullen28, Robert D. Reed3, Steven E. Scherer25, Stephen Richards25, James Mallet1, James Mallet10, W. Owen McMillan, Chris D. Jiggins2, Chris D. Jiggins6 
05 Jul 2012-Nature
TL;DR: It is inferred that closely related Heliconius species exchange protective colour-pattern genes promiscuously, implying that hybridization has an important role in adaptive radiation.
Abstract: Sequencing of the genome of the butterfly Heliconius melpomene shows that closely related Heliconius species exchange protective colour-pattern genes promiscuously.

1,103 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
26 Aug 2011-Science
TL;DR: The results show that the cis-regulatory evolution of a single transcription factor can repeatedly drive the convergent evolution of complex color patterns in distantly related species, thus blurring the distinction between convergence and homology.
Abstract: Mimicry—whereby warning signals in different species evolve to look similar—has long served as a paradigm of convergent evolution. Little is known, however, about the genes that underlie the evolution of mimetic phenotypes or to what extent the same or different genes drive such convergence. Here, we characterize one of the major genes responsible for mimetic wing pattern evolution in Heliconius butterflies. Mapping, gene expression, and population genetic work all identify a single gene, optix, that controls extreme red wing pattern variation across multiple species of Heliconius. Our results show that the cis-regulatory evolution of a single transcription factor can repeatedly drive the convergent evolution of complex color patterns in distantly related species, thus blurring the distinction between convergence and homology.

429 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Analysis of the role of introgressive hybridisation in transferring adaptations between mimetic Heliconius butterflies, taking advantage of the recent identification of a gene regulating red wing patterns in this genus, finds an almost perfect genotype by phenotype association across four species.
Abstract: It is widely documented that hybridisation occurs between many closely related species, but the importance of introgression in adaptive evolution remains unclear, especially in animals. Here, we have examined the role of introgressive hybridisation in transferring adaptations between mimetic Heliconius butterflies, taking advantage of the recent identification of a gene regulating red wing patterns in this genus. By sequencing regions both linked and unlinked to the red colour locus, we found a region that displays an almost perfect genotype by phenotype association across four species, H. melpomene, H. cydno, H. timareta, and H. heurippa. This particular segment is located 70 kb downstream of the red colour specification gene optix, and coalescent analysis indicates repeated introgression of adaptive alleles from H. melpomene into the H. cydno species clade. Our analytical methods complement recent genome scale data for the same region and suggest adaptive introgression has a crucial role in generating adaptive wing colour diversity in this group of butterflies.

336 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Nov 2019-Science
TL;DR: Tests to distinguish incomplete lineage sorting from introgression indicate that gene flow has obscured several ancient phylogenetic relationships in this group over large swathes of the genome, and a hitherto unknown inversion that traps a color pattern switch locus is identified.
Abstract: We used 20 de novo genome assemblies to probe the speciation history and architecture of gene flow in rapidly radiating Heliconius butterflies. Our tests to distinguish incomplete lineage sorting from introgression indicate that gene flow has obscured several ancient phylogenetic relationships in this group over large swathes of the genome. Introgressed loci are underrepresented in low-recombination and gene-rich regions, consistent with the purging of foreign alleles more tightly linked to incompatibility loci. Here, we identify a hitherto unknown inversion that traps a color pattern switch locus. We infer that this inversion was transferred between lineages by introgression and is convergent with a similar rearrangement in another part of the genus. These multiple de novo genome sequences enable improved understanding of the importance of introgression and selective processes in adaptive radiation.

295 citations


Cited by
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Journal Article
Fumio Tajima1
30 Oct 1989-Genomics
TL;DR: It is suggested that the natural selection against large insertion/deletion is so weak that a large amount of variation is maintained in a population.

11,521 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: For the next few weeks the course is going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach it’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery.
Abstract: 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

9,847 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
06 Jun 1986-JAMA
TL;DR: The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or her own research.
Abstract: I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

7,563 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce a new approach to perform relaxed phylogenetic analysis, which can be used to estimate phylogenies and divergence times in the face of uncertainty in evolutionary rates and calibration times.
Abstract: In phylogenetics, the unrooted model of phylogeny and the strict molecular clock model are two extremes of a continuum. Despite their dominance in phylogenetic inference, it is evident that both are biologically unrealistic and that the real evolutionary process lies between these two extremes. Fortunately, intermediate models employing relaxed molecular clocks have been described. These models open the gate to a new field of “relaxed phylogenetics.” Here we introduce a new approach to performing relaxed phylogenetic analysis. We describe how it can be used to estimate phylogenies and divergence times in the face of uncertainty in evolutionary rates and calibration times. Our approach also provides a means for measuring the clocklikeness of datasets and comparing this measure between different genes and phylogenies. We find no significant rate autocorrelation among branches in three large datasets, suggesting that autocorrelated models are not necessarily suitable for these data. In addition, we place these datasets on the continuum of clocklikeness between a strict molecular clock and the alternative unrooted extreme. Finally, we present analyses of 102 bacterial, 106 yeast, 61 plant, 99 metazoan, and 500 primate alignments. From these we conclude that our method is phylogenetically more accurate and precise than the traditional unrooted model while adding the ability to infer a timescale to evolution.

5,812 citations