Transition zones are of high evolutionary interest because unique patterns of spatial variation are often retained. Here, we investigated the phylogeography of the peacock blenny, Salaria pavo, a small marine intertidal fish that inhabits rocky habitats of the Mediterranean and the adjacent Atlantic Ocean. We screened 170 individuals using mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data from eight loca...

The distinction between model and nonmodel organisms is becoming increasingly blurred. High-throughput, second-generation sequencing approaches are being applied to organisms based on their interesting ecological, physiological, developmental, or evolutionary properties and not on the depth of genetic information available for them. Here, we illustrate this point using a low-cost, efficient tec...

Contacts across the Strait of Gibraltar in the Pleistocene have been studied in different research papers, which have demonstrated that this apparent barrier has been permeable to human and fauna movements in both directions. Our study, based on the genetic analysis of wild boar (Sus scrofa), suggests that there has been contact between Africa and Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar in the L...

It is well appreciated that historical and ecological processes are important determinates of freshwater biogeographic assemblages. Phylogeography can potentially lend important insights into the relative contribution of historical processes in biogeography. However, the extent that phylogeography reflects historical patterns of drainage connection may depend in large part on the dispersal capa...

BACKGROUND The craniometric specificity of the indigenous West Siberian human populations cannot be completely explained by the genetic interactions of the western and eastern Eurasian groups recorded in the archaeology of the area from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Anthropologists have proposed another probable explanation: contribution to the genetic structure of West Siberian indig...

More than a third of the European pool of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is fragmented into a number of subclades of haplogroup (hg) H, the most frequent hg throughout western Eurasia. Although there has been considerable recent progress in studying mitochondrial genome variation in Europe at the complete sequence resolution, little data of comparable resolution is so far available for regions...

Models for the development of species distribution in Europe typically invoke restriction in three temperate Mediterranean refugia during glaciations, from where recolonization of central and northern Europe occurred. The brown bear, Ursus arctos, is one of the taxa from which this model is derived. Sequence data generated from brown bear fossils show a complex phylogeographical history for wes...

Phylogeography contributes to our knowledge of regional biotas by integrating spatial and genetic information. In New Zealand, comprising two main islands and hundreds of smaller ones, phylogeography has transformed the way we view our biology and allowed comparison with other parts of the world. Here we review studies on New Zealand terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates. We find little evid...

We constructed a phylogenetic hypothesis for western Indian Ocean sunbirds (Nectarinia) and used this to investigate the geographic pattern of their diversification among the islands of the Indian Ocean. A total of 1309 bp of mitochondrial sequence data was collected from the island sunbird taxa of the western Indian Ocean region, combined with sequence data from a selection of continental (Afr...