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Abdominal Pigmentation Variation In Drosophila Polymorpha: Geographic Variation In The Trait, And Underlying Phylogeography, Jennifer A. Brisson, Daniela Cristina De Toni, Ian Duncan, Alan R. Templeton

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Drosophila polymorpha is a widespread species that exhibits abdominal pigmentation variation throughout its range. To gain insight into this variation we combined phenotypic and genotypic data to test a series of nested hypotheses. First, we tested the null hypothesis that geographic variation in pigmentation is due to neutral factors. We used nested clade analysis to examine the distribution of haplotypes from a nuclear and a mitochrondrial locus. Restricted gene flow via isolation by distance, the primary inference of this phylogeographic analysis, was then used to generate and test the hypothesis of increasing average abdominal pigmentation difference with increasing geographic distance. …