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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary And Population Dynamics Of Crustaceans In The Gulf Of Mexico, Laura Timm Jun 2018

Evolutionary And Population Dynamics Of Crustaceans In The Gulf Of Mexico, Laura Timm

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Evolution occurs and can be conceptualized along a spectrum, bounded on one extreme by the relationships between deep lineages – such as phyla, classes, and orders – and on the other by the molecular dynamics of operational taxonomic units within a species, defined as population genetics. The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand the evolutionary and population dynamics of crustaceans within the Gulf of Mexico. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I provide a guide to best phylogenetic practice while reviewing infraordinal relationships within Decapoda, including the promise held by next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches such as Anchored …


Phylogeny And Evolutionary Genomics Of Non-Photosynthetic Diatoms, Anastasiia Onyshchenko May 2018

Phylogeny And Evolutionary Genomics Of Non-Photosynthetic Diatoms, Anastasiia Onyshchenko

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diatoms are prolific photosynthesizers responsible for some 20% of global primary production. In real terms, the oxygen in one of every five breaths traces back to photosynthesis by marine diatoms. Among the tens of thousands of diatom species, a small handful of colorless diatom species in the genus Nitzschia have lost photosynthesis altogether and rely exclusively on extracellular organic carbon for growth. I used DNA sequence data to reconstruct the phylogeny of this group, and found that nonphotosynthetic diatoms are monophyletic, indicating that photosynthesis was lost just one time over the course of some 200 million years of diatom evolution. …


Advancing Behavioural Genomics By Considering Timescale, Clare C. Rittschof, Kimberly A. Hughes Feb 2018

Advancing Behavioural Genomics By Considering Timescale, Clare C. Rittschof, Kimberly A. Hughes

Entomology Faculty Publications

Animal behavioural traits often covary with gene expression, pointing towards a genomic constraint on organismal responses to environmental cues. This pattern highlights a gap in our understanding of the time course of environmentally responsive gene expression, and moreover, how these dynamics are regulated. Advances in behavioural genomics explore how gene expression dynamics are correlated with behavioural traits that range from stable to highly labile. We consider the idea that certain genomic regulatory mechanisms may predict the timescale of an environmental effect on behaviour. This temporally minded approach could inform both organismal and evolutionary questions ranging from the remediation of early …


Natural And Anthropogenic Drivers Of Tree Evolutionary Dynamics, Brandon M. Lind Jan 2018

Natural And Anthropogenic Drivers Of Tree Evolutionary Dynamics, Brandon M. Lind

Theses and Dissertations

Species of trees inhabit diverse and heterogeneous environments, and often play important ecological roles in such communities. As a result of their vast ecological breadth, trees have become adapted to various environmental pressures. In this dissertation I examine various environmental factors that drive evolutionary dynamics in threePinusspecies in California and Nevada, USA. In chapter two, I assess the role of management influence of thinning, fire, and their interaction on fine-scale gene flow within fire-suppressed populations of Pinus lambertiana, a historically dominant and ecologically important member of mixed-conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada, California. Here, I find evidence …