Genetic data are increasingly used in landscape ecology for the indirect assessment of functional connectivity, that is, the permeability of landscape to movements of organisms. Among available tools, matrix correlation analyses (e.g. Mantel tests or mixed models) are commonly used to test for the relationship between pairwise genetic distances and movement costs incurred by dispersing individuals. When organisms are spatially...

Ecosystems across the globe are threatened by climate change and human activities. New rapid survey approaches for monitoring biodiversity would greatly advance assessment and understanding of these threats. Taking advantage of next‐generation DNA sequencing, we tested an approach we call metabarcoding: high‐throughput and simultaneous taxa identification based on a very short (usually

For about 10 000 years, farmers have been managing cattle, sheep, and goats in a sustainable way, leading to animals that are well adapted to the local conditions. About 200 years ago, the situation started to change dramatically, with the rise of the concept of breed. All animals from the same breed began to be selected for the same phenotypic characteristics, and reproduction among breeds was seriously reduced. This correspo...

Genotyping errors occur when the genotype determined after molecular analysis does not correspond to the real genotype of the individual under consideration. Virtually every genetic data set includes some erroneous genotypes, but genotyping errors remain a taboo subject in population genetics, even though they might greatly bias the final conclusions, especially for studies based on individual identification. Here, we consider...