Several evolutionary hypotheses help explain why only some species adapt readily to new conditions and expand distributions beyond borders, but there is limited evidence testing these hypotheses. In this study, we consider patterns of neutral (microsatellite) and quantitative genetic variation in traits in three species of Drosophila from the montium species group in eastern Australia. We found...

HIV-1 infection has been shown to elicit strong CTL responses in some infected persons, but few data are available regarding the relationship between targeted epitopes and in vivo viral quasispecies. In this study, we examined the CTL response in a person infected for 15 yr with a CD4 count persistently >500 cells/microl. The dominant in vivo activated CTL response was directed against two over...

Performance records on 41,184 Red Angus cattle were analyzed and estimates of parameters calculated for absolute growth rate, relative growth rate and restricted selection indices. Heritability estimates for birth weight, 205-d weight, 365-d weight and postweaning gain were .46 +/- .02, .39 +/- .02, .40 +/- .02 and .36 +/- .02, respectively. Heritability estimates for preweaning, postweaning an...

DNA sequence variation at a mitochondrial and a nuclear intron locus was surveyed within and among multiple populations of the inland silverside (Menidia beryllina) from the southeastern United States and revealed discordant phylogenetic patterns but similar patterns of population genetic variation across nuclear and mitochondrial loci. Mitochondrial variation was geographically structured, wit...

It is often assumed in experiments and models that social learning abilities - how often individuals copy others, plus who and how they copy - are species-typical. Yet there is accruing evidence for systematic individual variation in social learning within species. Here we review evidence for this individual variation, placing it within a continuum of increasing phenotypic plasticity, from gene...

In birds and many other animals, there are large interspecific differences in the magnitude of annual variation in population size. Using time-series data on populations of solitary bird species, we found that fluctuations in population size of solitary birds were affected by the deterministic characteristics of the population dynamics as well as the stochastic factors. In species with highly v...

Species often harbour large amounts of phenotypic variation in ecologically important traits, and some of this variation is genetically based. Understanding how this genetic variation is spatially structured can help to understand species' ecological tolerances and range limits. We modelled the climate envelopes of Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, ranging from early- to late-flowering, as a func...

...............................................................................................ii Table of

res the effect of accent on duration from the Japanese rhythmic structure. Phonetic al that prepausal vowel duration significantly varies by more than 40% depending on accent is great degree of durational variation restricted tion suggests that the prepausal position is free ts of mora timing in Japanese.

Here, we describe a new HLA-B*3501-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitope in the influenza A virus (H3N2) nucleoprotein, which was found to exhibit a high degree of variation at nonanchor residues. The influenza virus variants emerged in chronological order, and CTLs directed against old variants failed to recognize more recent strains of influenza A virus, indicating an escape from CT...