phylogeography
grrlscientist | June 24, 2010tags: evolution, biogeography, phylogeography, animals, Here Be Dragons, How the Study of Animal and Plant Distributions Revolutionized Our Views of Life and Earth, Dennis McCarthy, book review
I'm happy: another book review of mine was just published, this time, by Science magazine. This book, Here Be Dragons: How the Study of Animal and Plant Distributions Revolutionized Our Views of Life and Earth (Oxford University Press: Oxford; 2009), is by Dennis McCarthy, a researcher at the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York. In short, I liked the book and I thought it was generally well-…
razib | February 14, 2010One of the interesting aspects ensuing from the rise of molecular phylogenetics is that the trees are generally concordant in broad strokes with older research which was based on morphology. This is not too surprising, as nature does tend to show some intelligible patterns which can be cross-checked with different methods (e.g., the fact of evolutionary change in the tree of life is evident in both the paleontological record and analysis of molecular genetic variation). Additionally, the cladistic revolution has produced a general uniformity of underlying logic when it comes to systematic…
razib | April 30, 2009I've been fine tuning Ubuntu all day with goodies and getting drivers to work right, so I missed this paper on African genetics:
Africa is the source of all modern humans, but characterization of genetic variation and of relationships among populations across the continent has been enigmatic. We studied 121 African populations, 4 African American populations, and 60 non-African populations for patterns of variation at 1327 nuclear microsatellite and insertion/deletion markers. We identified 14 ancestral population clusters in Africa that correlate with self-described ethnicity and shared…
razib | April 17, 2009In light of the relatively recent interaction of Bantu farmers and Pygmies in Central Africa, this paper is of note, Genetic and demographic implications of the Bantu expansion: insights from human paternal lineages:
The expansion of Bantu languages, which started around 5,000 years before present (YBP) in west/central Africa and spread all throughout sub-Saharan Africa, may represent one of the major and most rapid demographic movements in the history of the human species. Although the genetic footprints of this expansion have been unmasked through the analyses of the maternally-inherited…
razib | April 15, 2009Genetic Evidence of Geographical Groups among Neanderthals:
The Neanderthals are a well-distinguished Middle Pleistocene population which inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East. Since the 1950s paleoanthropological studies have suggested variability in this group. Different sub-groups have been identified in western Europe, in southern Europe and in the Middle East. On the other hand, since 1997, research has been published in paleogenetics, carried out on 15 mtDNA sequences from 12 Neanderthals. In this paper we used a new methodology…
grrlscientist | April 8, 2009tags: lories, Loriinae, Loriidae, ornithology, molecular biology, natural history museums
A young pair of Meyer's Lories (Lorikeets), Trichoglossus flavoviridis meyeri.
Image: Iggino [larger view].
"Can you help us identify a mystery lory in our collection?"
I was pleasantly surprised to find this email request from Donna Dittmann, Collections Manager and Museum Preparator for the Section of Genetic Resources at Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"Sure," I wrote back. "Send it to me and I'll see what I can do."
I, and some of my lories,…
grrlscientist | August 1, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, speciation, ring species, phylogeography, landscape genetics, crimson rosella, Platycercus elegans, parrots, birds, Australia
Crimson Rosella, Platycercus elegans.
Image: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
One of the challenges facing those who believe that evolution cannot create new species is explaining the problem of "ring species." Ring species are a group of geographically connected populations that can interbreed with nearby populations, but cannot breed with those populations that exist at each end of the cline (figure A). These populations…