Studies focusing on geographical genetic patterns of commensal species and on human history complement each other and provide proxies to trace common colonization events. On Madagascar, the unintentional introduction and spread of the commensal species R attus rattus by people may have left a living clue of human colonization patterns and history. In this study, we addressed this question by characterizing the genetic structur...

Gene flow in natural populations may be strongly influenced by landscape features. The integration of landscape characteristics in population genetic studies may thus improve our understanding of population functioning. In this study, we investigated the population genetic structure and gene flow pattern for the common vole, Microtus arvalis , in a heterogeneous landscape characterised by strong spatial and temporal variation....

The early stages of invasion involve demographic bottlenecks that may result in lower genetic variation in introduced populations as compared to source population/s. Low genetic variability may decrease the adaptive potential of such populations in their new environments. Previous population genetic studies of invasive species have reported varying levels of losses of genetic variability in comparisons of source and invasive p...

An understanding of the role of factors intrinsic to a species’ life history in structuring contemporary genetic variation is a fundamental, but understudied, aspect of evolutionary biology. Here, we assessed the influence of the propensity to outbreak in shaping worldwide genetic variation in Locusta migratoria , a cosmopolitan pest well known for its expression of density‐dependent phase polyphenism. We scored 14 microsatell...

Drosophila subobscura is a Palearctic species that was first observed in South and North America in the early 1980s, and that rapidly invaded broad latitudinal ranges on both continents. To trace the source and history of this invasion, we obtained genotypic data on nine microsatellite loci from two South American, two North American and five European populations of D. subobscura. We analysed these data with traditional statis...

Different categories of molecular markers have been used so far to study the population structure of sponges. However, these markers often did not have the resolution power to address precisely questions on structuring processes, especially at the intrapopulational level. In this study we show that microsatellites fulfil these expectations, allowing a fine description of population structure at different geographical scales in...

The founding of new populations by small numbers of colonists has been considered a potentially important mechanism promoting evolutionary change in island populations. Colonizing species, such as members of the avian species complex Zosterops lateralis , have been used to support this idea. A large amount of background information on recent colonization history is available for one Zosterops subspecies, Z. lateralis lateralis...

Evolutionary conflicts among social hymenopteran nestmates are theoretically likely to arise over the production of males and the sex ratio. Analysis of these conflicts has become an important focus of research into the role of kin selection in shaping social traits of hymenopteran colonies. We employ microsatellite analysis of nestmates of one social hymenopteran, the primitively eusocial and monogynous bumblebee Bombus hypno...

Dispersal, or the amount of dispersion between an individual’s birthplace and that of its offspring, is of great importance in population biology, behavioural ecology and conservation, however, obtaining direct estimates from field data on natural populations can be problematic. The prickly forest skink, Gnypetoscincus queenslandiae , is a rainforest endemic skink from the wet tropics of Australia. Because of its log‐dwelling...

The northern bettong, Bettongia tropica , is an endangered species of Potoroidae with a restricted distribution in the wet tropics of north Queensland, Australia. The species is only found within a thin strip of sclerophyll forest along the western margin of rainforest. This tight association with rainforest boundaries is predicted to have resulted in population isolation as rainforest contracted during the Pleistocene, though...

A juxtaposed microsatellite system (JMS) is composed of two microsatellite repeat arrays separated by a sequence of less than 200 bp and more than 20 bp. This paper presents the first empirical evaluation of JMSs for the study of genetic admixture induced by man, with brown trout ( Salmo trutta ) as model organism. Two distinct admixture situations were studied: native populations from streams of the Atlantic basin and of the...

Characterization of microsatellites in the parthenogenetic polyploid snail Melanoides tuberculata revealed an unusual high density of dinucleotide repeats. Multiple banding patterns were obtained at these loci, and interpreted as a consequence of polyploidy. Microsatellite variability was low within, but high between, shell morphotypes. Genotypes were wholly transmitted from mothers to offspring. These results suggest that rep...