Between plagues, the solitarious desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is generally thought to exist as small populations, which are particularly prone to extinction events in arid regions of Africa and Asia. Given the high genetic structuring observed in one geographical area (the Eritrean coast) by former authors, a metapopulation dynamics model involving repeated extinction and colonization events was favored. In this study, we assessed the validity of a demographic scenario involving temporary populations of the solitarious...

Understanding the adaptive response to environmental fluctuations represents a central issue in evolutionary biology. Population admixture between divergent ancestries has often been considered as an efficient short-term adaptation strategy. Cattle populations from the West African Bos taurus x Bos indicus hybrid zone represent a valuable resource to characterize the effect of such adaptive admixture at the genome level. We here provide a detailed assessment of the global and local genome ancestries of the Borgou breed,...

1. There is a fundamental trade-off between leaf traits associated with either resource acquisition or resource conservation. This gradient of trait variation, called the economics spectrum also applies to fine roots but whether it is consistent for coarse roots or at the plant community level remains untested. 2. We measured a set of morphological and chemical root traits at a community level (functional parameters; FP) in 20 plant communities located along land-use intensity gradients and...

Background: African wildlife experienced a reduction in population size and geographical distribution over the last millennium, particularly since the 19th century as a result of human demographic expansion, wildlife overexploitation, habitat degradation and cattle-borne diseases. In many areas, ungulate populations are now largely confined within a network of loosely connected protected areas. These metapopulations face gene flow restriction and run the risk of genetic diversity erosion. In this context, we assessed the “genetic health” of...

Understanding the effects of actions undertaken by human societies on crop evolution processes is a major challenge for the conservation of genetic resources. This study investigated the mechanisms whereby social boundaries associated with patterns of ethnolinguistic diversity have influenced the on-farm distribution of sorghum diversity. Social boundaries limit the diffusion of planting material, practices and knowledge, thus shaping crop diversity in situ. To assess the effect of social boundaries, this study was conducted in the...

Biodiversity, phylogeography and population genetic studies will be revolutionized by access to large datasets thanks to next generation sequencing methods. In this study, we develop an easy and cost-effective protocol for in-solution enrichment hybridization capture of complete chloroplast genomes applicable at deep multiplexed levels. The protocol uses cheap in-house species-specific probes developed via long range PCR of the entire chloroplast. Barcoded libraries are constructed and in-solution enrichment of the chloroplasts is done using the probes....