Identification keys to murid rodents of Argentina

Evolution of the genomic recombination rate in murid rodents.

Although very closely related species can differ in their fine-scale patterns of recombination hotspots, variation in the average genomic recombination rate among recently diverged taxa has rarely been surveyed. We measured recombination rates in eight species that collectively represent several temporal scales of divergence within a single rodent family, Muridae. We used a cytological approach...

A Karyological Study of Some Murid Rodents (Rodentia: Muridae) of Iran

Family Muridae consists of eight genera and 28 species in Iran. This family shows notable variability of karyological features. In this study, karyological data derived from 11 species of 7 genera of this family of Iran are presented and compared with previously published accounts. The included species were: Mus musculus musculus from Gonbad (2n=40, FN=40) and Birjand (2n=40, FN=38), Rattus nor...

Contributions of Protein-Coding and Regulatory Change to Adaptive Molecular Evolution in Murid Rodents

The contribution of regulatory versus protein change to adaptive evolution has long been controversial. In principle, the rate and strength of adaptation within functional genetic elements can be quantified on the basis of an excess of nucleotide substitutions between species compared to the neutral expectation or from effects of recent substitutions on nucleotide diversity at linked sites. Her...

L1 (LINE-1) retrotransposable elements provide a "fossil" record of the phylogenetic history of murid rodents.

The single most difficult problem in phylogenetic analysis is deciding whether a shared taxonomic character is due to common ancestry or one that appeared independently due to convergence, parallelism, or reversion to an ancestral state. Mammalian L1 retrotransposons undergo periodic amplifications in which multiple copies of the elements are interspersed in the genome. Because these elements a...

Preface [to Identification Keys to Strongylid Nematode Parasites of Equids]