Many plants and some animal species are polyploids. Non-disomically inherited markers (e.g. microsatellites) in such species cannot be analysed directly by standard population genetics methods developed for diploid species. One solution is to transform the polyploid codominant genotypes to pseudo diploid dominant genotypes, which can then be analysed by standard methods for various purposes such as spatial genetic structure, individual relatedness and relationship. Although this data transformation approach has been used repeatedly in the literature,...

Understanding the factors that contribute to loss of genetic diversity in fragmented populations is crucial for conservation measurements. Land-bridge archipelagoes offer ideal model systems for identifying the long-term effects of these factors on genetic variations in wild populations. In this study, we used 9 microsatellite markers to quantify genetic diversity and differentiation of 810 pond frogs (Pelophylax nigromaculataus) from 24 islands of the Zhoushan Archipelago and 3 sites on nearby mainland China and estimated the...

The construction of supermatrices from mining of DNA metadata is problematic due to incomplete species identification and incongruence of gene trees that hamper sequence concatenation based on Linnaean binomials. We applied methods from graph theory to minimize ambiguity of concatenation globally over a large data set. An initial step establishes sequence clusters for each locus that broadly correspond to Linnaean species. These clusters frequently are not consistent with binomials and specimen identifiers, which greatly complicates...

In many cooperatively-breeding species females mate extra-group, the adaptive value of which remains poorly understood. One hypothesis posits that females employ extra-group mating to access mates whose genotypes are more dissimilar to their own than their social mates’, so as to increase offspring heterozygosity. We test this hypothesis using life-history and genetic data from 36 cooperatively-breeding white-browed sparrow weaver (Plocepasser mahali) groups. Contrary to prediction, a dominant female’s relatedness to her social mate did not...

A recent study demonstrated that the embryos of soft-shelled turtles can reposition themselves within their eggs to exploit locally warm conditions. In the current paper, we ask whether turtle embryos actively seek out optimal thermal environments for their development, as do post-hatching individuals. Specifically, (1) do reptile embryos move away from dangerously-high temperatures, as well as towards warm temperatures? and (2) is such embryonic movement due to active thermoregulation, or (more simply) to passive embryonic...

1. A forager’s optimal patch-departure time can be predicted by the prescient marginal value theorem (pMVT), which assumes they have perfect knowledge of the environment, or by approaches such as Bayesian-updating and learning rules, which avoid this assumption by allowing foragers to use recent experiences to inform their decisions. 2. In understanding and predicting broader scale ecological patterns, individual-level mechanisms, such as patch-departure decisions, need to be fully elucidated. Unfortunately, there are few empirical studies...

Conventional wisdom predicts that sequential founder events will cause genetic diversity to erode in species with expanding geographic ranges, limiting evolutionary potential at the range margin. Here, we show that invasive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in South Africa preserve genetic diversity during range expansion, possibly as a result of frequent long-distance dispersal events. We further show that unfavourable environmental conditions trigger enhanced dispersal, as indicated by signatures of selection detected across the expanding range. This...