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Full-Text Articles in Cell and Developmental Biology
Species Delimitation Of Slimy Salamanders, Plethodon Kisatchie And Plethodon Mississippi, Across The Lower Mississippi River, Brock Hunter Stevenson
Species Delimitation Of Slimy Salamanders, Plethodon Kisatchie And Plethodon Mississippi, Across The Lower Mississippi River, Brock Hunter Stevenson
Master's Theses
Species are fundamental units of biodiversity yet delimiting species can be challenging. Slimy Salamanders of the Plethodon glutinosus species complex are a classic example of cryptic species for which species boundaries and relationships have proved difficult to determine. Once thought to be a single species ranging across the eastern United States, protein analysis revealed high genetic divergences among geographically distinct groups of populations, leading to 16 species being recognized within the group. Two of these species, the Louisiana Slimy Salamander (Plethodon kisatchie) and the Mississippi Slimy Salamander (Plethodon mississippi), are closely related but occur on opposite sides of the Mississippi …
Dynamics Of Hybrid Zones At A Continental Scale, Bradley T. Martin
Dynamics Of Hybrid Zones At A Continental Scale, Bradley T. Martin
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Hybridization has traditionally been viewed as a happenstance that negatively impacts populations, but is now recognized as an important evolutionary mechanism that can substantially impact the evolutionary trajectories of gene pools, influence adaptive capacity, and contravene or reinforce divergence. Physiographic processes are important drivers of dispersal, alternately funneling populations into isolation, promoting divergence, or facilitating secondary contact of diverged populations, increasing the potential for hybridization. In North America, glacial-interglacial cycles and geomorphological changes have provided a dynamic backdrop over the last two million years that promoted such oscillations of population contraction and expansion. These biogeographic processes have resulted in regional …