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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Evolution Of Forest Bitis (Macrocerastes) In Africa: Phylogeography, Population Genetics, And Potential As A Model For Batesian Mimicry, Eugene Richard Vaughan
Evolution Of Forest Bitis (Macrocerastes) In Africa: Phylogeography, Population Genetics, And Potential As A Model For Batesian Mimicry, Eugene Richard Vaughan
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The major biogeographical patterns characterizing the diversification of widely distributed species in the African rainforest remain poorly understood because of the low number of well-sampled studies that are focused on this region. I examine the phylogeography and population genetics of two broadly sympatric sister lineages of large African forest vipers (genus Bitis, subgenus Macrocerastes), the rhinoceros viper (B. nasicornis) and the Gaboon vipers (B. gabonica and B. rhinoceros). Despite their close relationship, these two lineages have notably different patterns of divergence in time and space. A time-calibrated phylogeny with sequence data from five genes, and population structure and PCA analyses …
Molecular Evolution And Biogeography Of The New World Eptesicus Bats, Xueling Yi
Molecular Evolution And Biogeography Of The New World Eptesicus Bats, Xueling Yi
Theses and Dissertations
Molecular evolution refers to a broad field of studies ranging from microevolution (e.g., population genetics) to macroevolution (e.g., phylogeny), including the bridging field of phylogeography. In natural populations, molecular studies are also combined with biogeography that links biological diversity with geographic distributions to provide a comprehensive understanding of evolutionary processes. The field of molecular evolution has been largely advanced from early exploratory descriptions to statistical tests on biological hypotheses and integrative analyses using sophisticated modeling. However, studies of molecular evolution still face some unresolved questions and challenges, especially in non-model systems. For example, the application of new technology has largely …
A Method For Identifying Ancient Introgression Between Caballine And Non-Caballine Equids Using Whole Genome High Throughput Data., Kalpani De Silva
A Method For Identifying Ancient Introgression Between Caballine And Non-Caballine Equids Using Whole Genome High Throughput Data., Kalpani De Silva
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Introgression is one of the main mechanisms that transfer adapted alleles between species. The advantageous variants will get positively selected and retained in the recipient population while rest of the variants undergo negative selection. When analyzing horse genome, two alleles were found in CXCL16 gene, one associated with susceptibility and one with resistance to developing persistent shedding of the Equine Arteritis Virus. The two alleles differ by 4 non-synonymous variants in exon 1 of the gene. Comparison with 3 non-caballine equids (zebras, asses and hemiones) revealed that one haplotype was almost identical to the haplotype found in non-caballines while the …
Who Cares About Models When You Have Genomes?, Richard Hunter Adams
Who Cares About Models When You Have Genomes?, Richard Hunter Adams
Biology Dissertations
There is no question about it: genomic data are revolutionizing biology. This is certainly evident in the fields of population genetics and phylogenetics for which genome-scale analyses have been used to study a myriad of evolutionary processes and organismal relationships across the Tree of Life. While genomic data have unquestionably advanced our understanding of biology by incredible leaps and bounds, the ease and affordability of generating such large and complex data has unfortunately, in some circumstances, led to the idea that simply “throwing more data” at a particular evolutionary question is likely to be sufficient. This notion has led to …
Hominoid Intraspecific Cranial Variation Mirrors Neutral Genetic Diversity, Julia M. Zichello, Karen L. Baab, Kieran P. Mcnulty, Christopher J. Raxworthy, Michael E. Steiper
Hominoid Intraspecific Cranial Variation Mirrors Neutral Genetic Diversity, Julia M. Zichello, Karen L. Baab, Kieran P. Mcnulty, Christopher J. Raxworthy, Michael E. Steiper
Publications and Research
Natural selection, developmental constraint, and plasticity have all been invoked as explanations for intraspecific cranial variation in humans and apes. However, global patterns of human cranial variation are congruent with patterns of genetic variation, demonstrating that population history has influenced cranial variation in humans. Here we show that this finding is not unique to Homo sapiens but is also broadly evident across extant ape species. Specifically, taxa that exhibit greater intraspecific cranial shape variation also exhibit greater genetic diversity at neutral autosomal loci. Thus, cranial shape variation within hominoid taxa reflects the population history of each species. Our results suggest …
Development Of An In Silico Kir Genotyping Algorithm And Its Application To Population And Cancer Immunogenetic Analyses, Howard Rosoff
Development Of An In Silico Kir Genotyping Algorithm And Its Application To Population And Cancer Immunogenetic Analyses, Howard Rosoff
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
Gene content determination and variant calling in the complex KIR genomic region are useful for immune system function analysis, pathogenesis and disease risk factor elucidation, immunotherapy development, evolutionary investigations, and human migration modeling. Sequence-specific oligonucleotide and sequence-specific primer PCR methods are the de facto standards for KIR presence/absence identification, but the current platforms are unsuitable for SNP calling, impractical for KIR typing large cohorts of DNA samples, and inapplicable for typing repositories in which sequence data, but not cells or cell analytes, are available. Alternative typing methods, such as in silico sequence-based typing, can address the problems associated with amplicon-based …
The Role Of Landscape Variation In Shaping The Evolutionary Diversification Of Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) In A Biodiversity Hotspot, Matthew William Mitchell
The Role Of Landscape Variation In Shaping The Evolutionary Diversification Of Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) In A Biodiversity Hotspot, Matthew William Mitchell
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
In this dissertation, I combine population genetic and demographic history analyses of autosomal, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome genetic markers with spatially explicit modeling techniques to study the biogeographic mechanisms responsible for shaping patterns of genetic diversity among chimpanzees in Cameroon and eastern Nigeria. I also describe a new software tool, TESS Ad-Mixer, that I developed early on in this study to help visualize the geographic distribution of demes recovered from population cluster analyses.