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Full-Text Articles in Biodiversity

Landscape Genetics Of The Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma Opacum) At Mammoth Cave National Park, James Kyle Martin Dec 2013

Landscape Genetics Of The Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma Opacum) At Mammoth Cave National Park, James Kyle Martin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Habitat connectivity is important to maintain in order to prevent loss of genetic diversity, reduce inbreeding depression, and decrease extinction risk in threatened or endangered species. Here I present a landscape genetics study on marbled salamanders (Ambystoma opacum) in highly connected forested habitat at Mammoth Cave National Park. This investigation of gene flow among ponds within a mostly continuous landscape provides data that can be compared with patterns observed in more fragmented landscapes. These comparisons can provide a means of investigating the separate effects of structural and functional habitat connectivity on amphibian genetic population structure. Structural connectivity refers to the …


Wallace And Incipient Structures: A World Of "More Recondite" Influences, Charles H. Smith Nov 2013

Wallace And Incipient Structures: A World Of "More Recondite" Influences, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

Alfred Russel Wallace is well-known for his co-discovery of the principle of natural selection. Natural selection is usually considered a process, but it is not clear that Wallace regarded it in exactly these terms. In fact he more likely thought of the relationships involved as representing what we would now term a “state space,” a negative feedback loop wherein populations are maintained at healthy levels through elimination of the unfit. Both before and after the advent of natural selection Wallace clung to the idea that “more recondite forces” were shaping the nature and direction of evolution; this is especially evident …


Wallace: The Review, And Wallace: The Preview, Charles H. Smith Jan 2013

Wallace: The Review, And Wallace: The Preview, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

In this essay commemorating the one hundred year anniversary of his death, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) is remembered for his main contributions to biogeography, and pointed to as a possible source of inspiration for future work in that field. As one of the science’s “fathers,” Wallace established both methods for study and a long-lived geographical systemization of animal distribution patterns. His efforts, moreover, may yet have the potential to inspire further new studies in the subject.