The emergence of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) in the Himalayan highlands is of significant veterinary and public health concern and may be related to climate warming and anthropogenic landscape change, or simply improved surveillance. To investigate this phenomenon, a One Health approach focusing on the phylogeography of JEV, the distribution and abundance of the mosquito vectors, and sero...

This study reports the isolation and polymorphism characterization of four plastid indels and six nuclear microsatellite loci in the invasive plant Heracleum mantegazzianum . These markers were tested in 27 individuals from two distant H. mantegazzianum populations. Plastid indels revealed the presence of five chlorotypes while five nuclear microsatellite loci rendered polymorphism. Application...

It has long been assumed that cyanobacteria have, as with other free-living microorganisms, a ubiquitous occurrence. Neither the geographical dispersal barriers nor allopatric speciation has been taken into account. We endeavoured to examine the spatial and temporal patterns of global distribution within populations of the cyanobacterium Microcoleus vaginatus, originated from three continents, ...

Nested clade phylogeographical analysis (NCPA) has become a common tool in intraspecific phylogeography. To evaluate the validity of its inferences, NCPA was applied to actual data sets with 150 strong a priori expectations, the majority of which had not been analysed previously by NCPA. NCPA did well overall, but it sometimes failed to detect an expected event and less commonly resulted in a f...

Phylogeography has recently become more abundant in studies of demographic history of both wild and domestic species. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the intron of the Y-chromosomal gene UTY19 displays a north-south gradient in modern cattle. Support for this geographical distribution of haplogroups has previously also been seen in ancient cattle from Germany. However, when analysing ...

In China, species of Atraphaxis (Polygonaceae) primarily inhabit arid zones across temperate steppe and desert regions. The complex geologic history (e.g., expansion of deserts) and extreme climate shifts of the region appear to have played an important role in shaping the phylogeography of Atraphaxis. The present study focuses on species-level phylogeographic patterns of Atraphaxis in China, w...

Presence or absence of predators selects for different kind of morphologies. Hence, we expect variation in traits that protect against predators to vary over geographical areas where predators vary in past and present abundance. Abdominal larval spines in dragonfly larvae provide protection against fish predators. We studied geographical variation in larval spine length of the dragonfly Leucorr...

Sequence analyses and subtyping of Bacillus anthracis strains from Georgia reveal a single distinct lineage (Aust94) that is ecologically established. Phylogeographic analysis and comparisons to a global collection reveals a clade that is mostly restricted to Georgia. Within this clade, many groups are found around the country, however at least one subclade is only found in the eastern part. Th...

Cryptic northern refugia beyond the ice limit of the Pleistocene glaciations may have had significant influence on the current pattern of biodiversity in Arctic regions. In order to evaluate whether northern glacial refugia existed in the Canadian Arctic, we examined mitochondrial DNA phylogeography in the northernmost species of rodents, the collared lemming (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus) sampled...

Lobelia giberroa is a giant rosette plant growing in the afro-montane belt of the afro-alpine environment, a unique and little-studied ecosystem occupying the high mountains of eastern Africa. We analysed amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) from 11 mountain systems in Ethiopia and Tropical East Africa to infer the phylogeographical history of the species. A total of 191 individuals ...