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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Effects Of Riverine Barriers On Avian Evolution In The Amazon Basin, Andre Eugene Moncrieff
Effects Of Riverine Barriers On Avian Evolution In The Amazon Basin, Andre Eugene Moncrieff
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
The high biodiversity found in the Amazon Basin has long captivated the attention of naturalists and evolutionary biologists seeking to explain its origins. Early observations by Alfred Wallace highlighted the role of rivers in delimiting the geographic ranges of many species; furthermore, where rivers narrow towards their headwaters, he noted that some species cross rivers freely. A major goal of this dissertation is to investigate how these and other observations about riverine barriers might inform our understanding of how speciation unfolds in Amazonia. My approach involved generating genomic data with dense geographic sampling for manakins in the genus Lepidothrix, …
Evolution Of Green Blood In New Guinea Lizards: Phylogenomics, Biogeography, And Comparative Genomics, Zachary Rodriguez
Evolution Of Green Blood In New Guinea Lizards: Phylogenomics, Biogeography, And Comparative Genomics, Zachary Rodriguez
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Non-model organisms with evolutionary novelties and complex distributions can provide valuable insight into the mechanisms underlying biological diversity. Green blood is one of the most unusual vertebrate physiologies and has repeatedly evolved in lizards from the megadiverse island of New Guinea. An unusually high concentration of the toxic green bile pigment biliverdin causes the green coloration of these lizards' blood, muscles, and bones. This dissertation uncovered the complex history of this novel trait (Chapter 2), identified protein-coding sequences that underlie green blood in lizards (Chapter 3), and explored evolutionary processes that drive genetic diversity in high-elevation lizards. To accurately trace …
Speciation And Hybridization In Jamaican-Endemic Streamertail Hummingbirds (Trochilus Polytmus And T. Scitulus), Caroline D. Judy
Speciation And Hybridization In Jamaican-Endemic Streamertail Hummingbirds (Trochilus Polytmus And T. Scitulus), Caroline D. Judy
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Streamertails hummingbirds (Trochilus polytmus and T. scitulus) are recently diverged sister taxa that appear to have speciated in situ on the island of Jamaica. They are distinguished by male bill color, a secondary sexual trait that is coral red in T. polytmus and jet black in T. scitulus. They hybridize in a narrow zone where their ranges meet in eastern Jamaica. In Chapter 2, I performed a formal population survey of T. scitulus to determine the size of the population, which was unknown. I determined that the total population contains well over 100,000 individuals despite its limited …