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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons™
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- Keyword
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- Biodiversity; Biogeography; Biogeography — Climatic factors; Birds – Evolution; Birds – Geographical distribution; Evolution (Biology); Molecular genetics; North America; Paleobiogeography; Population genetics; South America (1)
- Biogeography; Biotic communities; Grasslands; Heteromyidae; North America; Phylogeography; Rodents (1)
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Molecular Evolution And Historical Biogeography Of New World Birds, Brian T. Smith
Molecular Evolution And Historical Biogeography Of New World Birds, Brian T. Smith
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Deciphering the patterns of how biodiversity has evolved across time and space has remained a fundamental objective for biologists for the last 200 years. Researchers are faced with the challenge of interpreting the complexity of evolutionary patterns that have been generated over the deep history of the Earth. The advancement of DNA sequencing technology has yielded a new and powerful genetic toolkit that has allowed biologists to address novel evolutionary questions. For my dissertation research, I used molecular genetics and a statistical framework to study the evolution and historical biogeography of birds distributed in North and South America. My dissertation …
Phylogeography Of Three Heteromyid Taxa: Insight On The Evolution Of A North American Arid Grassland Rodent Guild, Sean A. Neiswenter
Phylogeography Of Three Heteromyid Taxa: Insight On The Evolution Of A North American Arid Grassland Rodent Guild, Sean A. Neiswenter
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Revealing how communities are shaped by abiotic and biotic factors plays a central role in biogeographic and comparative phylogeographic studies. The biogeography of North American arid grasslands is explored using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from three groups of heteromyid rodents that are broadly sympatric in aridlands across western North America. Phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses are used to estimate the timing of divergences within each group. A general pattern of late Miocene divergence and expansion of lineages in each of the groups that is coincident with the rapid expansion of arid grasslands at the time. The initial divergence is followed …