Life Sciences Commons^™

Maximum Likelihood Estimates Of Species Trees: How Accuracy Of Phylogenetic Inference Depends Upon The Divergence History And Sampling Design, John Mccormack, Huateng Huang, L. Knowles

John E. McCormack

The understanding that gene trees are often in discord with each other and with the species trees that contain them has led researchers to methods that incorporate the inherent stochasticity of genetic processes in the phylogenetic estimation procedure. Recently developed methods for species-tree estimation that not only consider the retention and sorting of ancestral polymorphism but also quantify the actual probabilities of incomplete lineage sorting are expected to provide an improvement over earlier summary-statistic based approaches that discard much of the information content of gene trees. However, these new methods have yet to be tested on truly challenging evolutionary histories …

Life History, Sexual Dimorphism And 'Ornamental' Feathers In The Mesozoic Bird Confuciusornis Sanctus., Winfried S. Peters, Dieter Stefan Peters

Winfried S. Peters

Identifying Conservation-Priority Areas In The Tropics: A Land-Use Change Modeling Approach, Shaily Menon, R. Gil Pontius Jr., Joseph Rose, M. Khan, Kamaljit Bawa

Shaily Menon

Most quantitative methods for identifying conservation-priority areas require more detailed knowledge about the extent and distribution of biodiversity than is currently available. Accelerated and irreversible losses of biodiversity call for the development of alternative methods to identify priority sites for biodiversity inventory and protection. We focused on the state of Arunachal Pradesh, a biodiversity-rich region in northeast India. We used a geographic information system and spatially explicit modeling to examine the correlation of land-cover and land-use patterns with biogeophysical characteristics and to project future patterns of land-use change. In 1988, 70% of Arunachal Pradesh was covered by forest. We project …

Landscape Genetics Of California Mule Deer (Odocoileus Hemionus): The Roles Of Ecological And Historical Factors In Generating Differentiation, Katherine Pease, Adam Freedman, John Pollinger, John Mccormack, Wolfgang Buermann, Jeff Rodzen, Jim Banks, Erin Meredith, Vernon Bleich, Robert Schaefer, Ken Jones, Robert Wayne

John E. McCormack

Landscape genetics is an emerging discipline that utilizes environmental and historical data to understand geographic patterns of genetic diversity. Niche modelling has added a new dimension to such efforts by allowing species–environmental associations to be projected into the past so that hypotheses about historical vicariance can be generated and tested independently with genetic data. However, previous approaches have primarily utilized DNA sequence data to test inferences about historical isolation and may have missed very recent episodes of environmentally mediated divergence. We type 15 microsatellite loci in California mule deer and identify five genetic groupings through a Structure analysis that are …

The Value Of A Net‐Cage As A Fish Aggregating Device In Southern California, Daniel Pondella

Daniel Pondella

There is an urgent need for primary data that can be used to quantify the value of marine aquaculture facilities that also describe influences on the surrounding natural ecosystem and its wild fish communities. Divers completed 360 transect replicates below a net-cage and at nearby and distant rocky reefs off Catalina Island, California, estimating the species abundance and size class of all conspicuous fishes in the water column. We observed 10,234 fishes aggregating below the net-cage with a mean annual density of 142 (SE ± 30) per 100 m2 and diversity H′ 2.29. At the adjacent reference reef, we counted …