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...

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...