Understanding how immune genetic variation is shaped by selective and neutral processes in wild populations is of prime importance in both evolutionary biology and epidemiology. The European roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus ) has considerably expanded its distribution range these last decades, notably by colonizing agricultural landscapes. This range shift is likely to have led to bottlenecks and increased roe deer exposure to a...

Molecular markers produced by next‐generation sequencing ( NGS ) technologies are revolutionizing genetic research. However, the costs of analysing large numbers of individual genomes remain prohibitive for most population genetics studies. Here, we present results based on mathematical derivations showing that, under many realistic experimental designs, NGS of DNA pools from diploid individuals allows to estimate the allele f...

Black rats are major invasive vertebrate pests with severe ecological, economic and health impacts. Remarkably, their evolutionary history has received little attention, and there is no firm agreement on how many species should be recognized within the black rat complex. This species complex is native to I ndia and S outheast A sia. According to current taxonomic classification, there are three taxa living in sympatry in sever...

An understanding of the evolutionary history and dynamics of invasive species is required for the construction of predictive models of future spread and the design of biological management measures. The black rat ( Rattus rattus ) is a major vertebrate invader with a worldwide distribution. Despite the severe ecological, economic and health impacts of this species, its evolutionary history has been little studied. We carried o...

The multimammate rat Mastomys huberti is a Sahelian species restricted to West Africa. Throughout its distribution area, the species is associated with humid habitats, flood plains and ponds, which make its current distribution highly fragmented. Knowing that humid and dry climatic phases regularly alternated along the Quaternary in West Africa, it can be postulated that the evolutionary history of the species and its genetic...