The evolutionary importance of postnatal ontogenies has long been recognized, but most studies of ontogenetic trajectories have focused exclusively on morphological traits. For animals, this represents a major omission because behavioral traits and their ontogenies often have relatively direct relationships to fitness. Here four replicate lines of house mice artificially selected for high early...

The pervasiveness of sex and recombination remains one of the most enigmatic problems in evolutionary biology. According to many theoretical models, recombination can increase the rate of adaptation by restoring genetic variation. However, the potential for genetic drift to generate conditions that produce this outcome has yet to be studied experimentally. We have designed and performed an expe...

Measures of genetic divergence have long been used to identify evolutionary processes operating within and between species. However, recent reviews have described a bias in the use of relative divergence measures towards incorrectly identifying genomic regions that are seemingly immune to introgression. Here, we present a novel and opposite bias of relative divergence measures: misidentifying r...

1. Effective population sizes (N(e)) and migration rates (m) are critical evolutionary parameters that impact on population survival and determine the relative influence of selection and genetic drift. While the parameter m is well-studied in animal populations, N(e) remains challenging to measure and consequently is only rarely estimated, particularly in insect taxa. 2. We used demographic and...

Groups of recently diverged species offer invaluable glimpses into the history and genetic basis of speciation and phenotypic evolution. In this report, we combine phylogenetic and population-genetic approaches to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the Drosophila bipectinata species complex. This complex is a group of four closely related, largely sympatric species--D. bipectinata, D. para...

Examination of the genetic structure of the vairone Telestes souffia based on 10 nuclear markers (microsatellites) revealed little-to-moderate genetic differentiation between geographically adjacent populations in the eastern part of Lake Constance in central Europe. Results emphasize the critically endangered status of this freshwater fish in the upper Rhine River system.

Population genetic structures of the mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) were studied in the Mediterranean Sea. Fragments of 272 bp (S. scomber) and 387 bp (S. japonicus) of the 5'-end of the mitochondrial control region were sequenced from spawning individuals collected off the coasts of Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. High levels of mitochondrial control regi...

Genetic variation and divergence among samples of Chilean hake Merluccius gayi, from three localities off the coast of Chile and one locality off the coast of northern Peru, were assessed using sequences from the control region of mitochondrial DNA. Homogeneity tests revealed occurrence of at least three distinct genetic stocks of M. gayi within the region sampled. Factors potentially contribut...

The mechanisms shaping island biotas are not yet well understood mostly because of a lack of studies comparing eco-evolutionary fingerprints over entire taxonomic groups. Here, we linked community structure (richness, frequency and nestedness) and genetic differentiation (based on mitochondrial DNA) in order to compare insular butterfly communities occurring over a key intercontinental area in ...

The evolution of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) during chronic infection involves the rapid, continuous turnover of genetic diversity. However, the role of natural selection, relative to random genetic drift, in governing this process is unclear. We tested a stochastic model of genetic drift using partial envelope sequences sampled longitudinally in 28 infected children. In each case ...