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Impacts of Quaternary Climate History on the Biogeography of Specialized Butterflies in the Great Basin of North AmericaNARA Subscribed
Aim Dramatic Quaternary climate fluctuations impacted the evolutionary history and contemporary biogeography of many residents of the Great Basin Desert of western North America. This study investigates the historical biogeographic processes that shaped the contemporary distribution of genetic variation in a polytypic group of specialized butterflies that are residents of unique dune and playa habitats. Many of the subspecies...
Prolonging survival in good health is a fundamental societal goal. However, the leading determinants of disability-free survival in healthy older people have not been well established. Data from ASPREE, a bi-national placebo-controlled trial of aspirin with 4.7 years median follow-up, was analysed. At enrolment, participants were healthy and without prior cardiovascular events, dementia or persistent physical disability. Disab...
Extreme heterogeneity of population response to climatic variation and the limits of predictionNARA Subscribed
Certain general facets of biotic response to climate change, such as shifts in phenology and geographic distribution, are well characterized; however, it is not clear whether the observed similarity of responses across taxa will extend to variation in other population‐level processes. We examined population response to climatic variation using long‐term incidence data (collected over 42 years) encompassing 149 butterfly specie...
The predictability of genomic changes underlying a recent host shift in Melissa blue butterfliesNARA Subscribed
Despite accumulating evidence that evolution can be predictable, studies quantifying the predictability of evolution remain rare. Here, we measured the predictability of genome‐wide evolutionary changes associated with a recent host shift in the Melissa blue butterfly ( Lycaeides melissa ). We asked whether and to what extent genome‐wide patterns of evolutionary change in nature could be predicted (i) by comparisons among inst...
Many areas of research in ecology and evolutionary biology depend on the quantification of dietary niche width. For herbivorous insects, diet breadth has most often been measured as simply the number and type of host plant taxa attacked. We propose an index of host range (which we refer to as “ordinated diet breadth”) based on observed associations between plants and insects, and the calculation of multivariate distances among...
Regional population differentiation in the morphologically diverse, elevationally widespread Nearctic skipper Polites sabuletiNARA Subscribed
Aim To evaluate three phylogeographical models associated with the presence of mountains (montane vicariance, sky island and parapatry) as drivers of intraspecific diversification in the sandhill skipper, Polites sabuleti (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae), a morphologically variable species found in a variety of habitats from sea level to the alpine zone. Location Western North America. Methods The mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase...
The evolution of novel host use is unlikely to be constrained by trade‐offs or a lack of genetic variationNARA Subscribed
The genetic and ecological factors that shape the evolution of animal diets remain poorly understood. For herbivorous insects, the expectation has been that trade‐offs exist, such that adaptation to one host plant reduces performance on other potential hosts. We investigated the genetic architecture of alternative host use by rearing individual Lycaeides melissa butterflies from two wild populations in a crossed design on two...
Admixture and the organization of genetic diversity in a butterfly species complex revealed through common and rare genetic variantsNARA Subscribed
Detailed information about the geographic distribution of genetic and genomic variation is necessary to better understand the organization and structure of biological diversity. In particular, spatial isolation within species and hybridization between them can blur species boundaries and create evolutionary relationships that are inconsistent with a strictly bifurcating tree model. Here, we analyse genome‐wide DNA sequence and...
A hierarchical perspective on the diversity of butterfly species' responses to weather in the Sierra Nevada MountainsNARA Subscribed
An important and largely unaddressed issue in studies of biotic–abiotic relationships is the extent to which closely related species, or species living in similar habitats, have similar responses to weather. We addressed this by applying a hierarchical, Bayesian analytical framework to a long‐term data set for butterflies which allowed us to simultaneously investigate responses of the entire fauna and individual species. A sma...
Aim The aim of this study was to investigate patterns of genetic isolation associated with populations in discrete habitat patches in a North American cold desert through analysis of the pallid dotted‐blue butterfly, Euphilotes pallescens . This small butterfly is largely restricted to low‐elevation habitats across the Great Basin. The apparent geographical isolation and reported morphological variation among E. pallescens pop...
Widespread mito‐nuclear discordance with evidence for introgressive hybridization and selective sweeps in LycaeidesNARA Subscribed
We investigated the extent and potential cause(s) of mitochondrial introgression within the polytypic North American Lycaeides species complex (Lepidoptera). By comparing population genetic structure based on mitochondrial DNA (COI and COII) and nuclear DNA (251 polymorphic amplified fragment length polymorphism markers), we detected substantial mito‐nuclear discordance, primarily involving a single mitochondrial haplotype (h0...
Identifying units for conservation using molecular systematics: the cautionary tale of the Karner blue butterflyNARA Subscribed
The federally endangered North American Karner blue butterfly ( Lycaeides melissa samuelis ) and the closely related Melissa blue butterfly ( L. m. melissa ) can be distinguished based on life history and morphology. Western populations of L. m. samuelis share mitochondrial haplotypes with L. m. melissa populations, while eastern populations of L. m. samuelis have divergent haplotypes. Here we test two hypotheses concerning th...
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