Life Sciences Commons^™

Phylogeographic Relationships Of Coereba Flaveola And Their Malaria Parasites, Meghann Humphries

Dissertations

This dissertation is broadly focused on elucidating how the geographic structure and demographic changes in host and parasite populations relate to one another, and how such interactions contribute to the generation and maintenance of biological diversity.

I begin by investigating the population structure of the Coereba flaveola (bananaquit) population within Puerto Rico, which is the apparent source of several expansions of the species into the Lesser Antilles. These findings indicate that both island and taxon effects influence the observed demographic changes. Because susceptibility to antagonists is related to both host species-specific characteristics and to geographical location, coevolutionary outcomes of these …

Fighting Microbial Drug Resistance: A Primer On The Role Of Evolutionary Biology In Public Health, Gabriel Perron, R. Inglis, Pleuni Pennings, Sarah Cobey

Biology Department Faculty Works

Although microbes have been evolving resistance to antimicrobials for millennia, the spread of resistance in pathogen populations calls for the development of new drugs and treatment strategies. We propose that successful, long-term resistance management requires a better understanding of how resistance evolves in the first place. This is an opportunity for evolutionary biologists to engage in public health, a collaboration that has substantial precedent. Resistance evolution has been an important tool for developing and testing evolutionary theory, especially theory related to the genetic basis of new traits and constraints on adaptation. The present era is no exception. The articles in …

Host-Parasite Interactions In Galapagos Seabirds, Iris Ilena Levin

Dissertations

Parasites exhibit a wide range of life history strategies that contribute to different dispersal abilities, host specialization, transmission modes, life-cycle complexity and population structure. Understanding dispersal rates in hosts and parasites is instrumental in defining the scale at which coevolution may be occurring. In order to better understand how and when parasites move between different hosts, I studied a seabird – Hippoboscid fly ectoparasite (and vector) – Haemosporidian parasite system in the Galapagos Islands. I began by describing the Haemosporidian parasites of Galapagos seabirds, discovering a Plasmodium species parasite in Galapagos Penguins (Sphensicus mendiculus), and a new clade of Hippoboscid-vectored …

Population Genetics Of Island Endemics: Neutral And Major Histocompatibility Loci, Jennifer Lynn Bollmer

Dissertations

Island archipelagoes are ideal for the study of microevolutionary forces due to their multiple, closely related but geographically disjunct populations. I used both neutral and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) loci to determine the population genetic structures of bird species endemic to the Galapagos Islands. MHC molecules recognize foreign pathogens in the body, and these loci are known for their high degree of genetic variability maintained by natural selection. Small island populations are predicted to have reduced genetic variability due to the effects of genetic drift; however, selection may be strong enough to prevent the loss of variability at MHC loci. …