Weeds and invasive plants perform the colonization niche by seizing locally available opportunity spacetime created by human activity. The urge to understand and predict weed life history behavior provides a strong scientific and practical motivation to develop models. Most current weed models are quantitative and demographic. This chapter is a critical review of the limitations of demographic ...

To infer the subclonality of rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) and predict the temporal order of genetic events for the tumorigenic process, and to identify novel drivers, we applied a systematic method that takes into account germline and somatic alterations in 44 tumor-normal RMS pairs using deep whole-genome sequencing. Intriguingly, we find that loss of heterozygosity of 11p15.5 and mutations in RAS p...

Short interspersed repetitive elements - SINEs - are being championed as near-perfect phylogenetic characters; they have recently been used with notable success to resolve some phylogenetic conundrums, but they do have certain limitations that restrict their use as 'perfect' characters for molecular systematics.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has a long history of emergence into urban transmission cycles from its ancestral, enzootic, sylvatic foci in Sub-Saharan Africa, most recently spreading to the Americas beginning in 2013. Since 2004, reemergence has resulted in millions of cases of severe, debilitating and often chronic arthralgia on five continents. Here, we review this history based on phylogenetic ...

Rabies virus (RABV) is enzootic throughout Africa, with the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) being the principal vector. Dog rabies is estimated to cause 24,000 human deaths per year in Africa, however, this estimate is still considered to be conservative. Two sub-Saharan African RABV lineages have been detected in West Africa. Lineage 2 is present throughout West Africa, whereas Africa 1a domin...

Phylogenetic inference can potentially result in a more accurate tree using data from multiple loci. However, if the loci are incongruent-due to events such as incomplete lineage sorting or horizontal gene transfer-it can be misleading to infer a single tree. To address this, many previous contributions have taken a mechanistic approach, by modeling specific processes. Alternatively, one can cl...

Whole-genome assemblies of 19 placental mammals and two outgroup species were used to reconstruct the order and orientation of syntenic fragments in chromosomes of the eutherian ancestor and six other descendant ancestors leading to human. For ancestral chromosome reconstructions, we developed an algorithm (DESCHRAMBLER) that probabilistically determines the adjacencies of syntenic fragments us...

The impact of transposable elements (TEs) on genome structure, plasticity, and evolution is still not well understood. The recent availability of complete genome sequences makes it possible to get new insights on the evolutionary dynamics of TEs from the phylogenetic analysis of their multiple copies in a wide range of species. However, this source of information is not always fully exploited. ...

T. Ketelaar () Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, MSC 3452, Las Cruces, NM, 88001-8001, USA e-mail: [email protected] The first rumblings of a modern evolutionary psychology of the emotions began in the late 1880s in the form of William James’ writings on instinct and emotion. James’ most notable attempt to combine Darwin’s insights on human nature with a scientific discuss...

Evolutionary and life history perspectives allow a fuller understanding of both patterns of growth and development and variations in disease risk. Evolutionary processes act to ensure successful reproduction and not the preservation of health and longevity, and this entails trade-offs both between traits and across the life course. Developmental plasticity adjusts the developmental trajectory s...