Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Parallel Shifts In Ecology And Natural Selection In An Island Lizard, Ryan Calsbeek, Wolfgang Buermann, Thomas B. Smith

Dartmouth Scholarship

Natural selection is a potent evolutionary force that shapes phenotypic variation to match ecological conditions. However, we know little about the year-to-year consistency of selection, or how inter-annual variation in ecology shapes adaptive landscapes and ultimately adaptive radiations. Here we combine remote sensing data, field experiments, and a four-year study of natural selection to show that changes in vegetation structure associated with a severe drought altered both habitat use and natural selection in the brown anole, Anolis sagrei.

Results: In natural populations, lizards increased their use of vegetation in wet years and this was correlated with selection on limb length …

A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Armored Scale Insects, Based Upon Nuclear, Mitochondrial, And Endosymbiont Gene Sequences, Jeremy C. Andersen

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Armored scale insects (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) are among the most invasive insects in the world. They have unusual genetic systems, including diverse types of paternal genome elimination (PGE) and parthenogenesis. Intimate relationships with their host plants and bacterial endosymbionts make them potentially important subjects for the study of co- evolution. Also, in some groups, the adult female never sheds the second instars cuticle, and remains within its confines, a habit referred to as the pupillarial habit. Here we expand upon recent phylogenetic work (Morse and Normark 2006) by analyzing a partitioned dataset including armored scale and endoysmbiont DNA from one hundred …