Conservation Genetics
For the past 20 years we have been involved in a long-term project focusing on giant Galapagos tortoises, an iconic complex of 15 species endemic from the Galapagos Islands. These tortoises, which inspired Charles Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection, include a complex of morphologically and genetically distinct species. They once thrived on the islands, but now are either greatly...
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Three land snails, Poecilozonites bermudensis, P. circumfirmatus, and P reinianus were endemic to the island of Bermuda. P. reinianus became extinct in the early 20th century and the other two were common through the 1970s, but have declined precipitously since (largely due to introduced carnivorous snails). P. bermudensis was thought to be completely extinct until a few years ago when a ...
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Some evolutionary genetic models predict that small populations are under continuous threat from accumulating deleterious mutations in their genomes, while other models suggest small populations can evolve to be robust to these effects. To date, there is almost no empirical evidence that describes the impact of long-term population size on genome evolution.
In order to explore this fundamental...
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