0000000000001391
AUTHOR
Christian Tritsch
Genetic structure of Cirsium palustre (Asteraceae) and its role in host diversification of Tephritis conura (Diptera: Tephritidae)
Whether or not a host plant is incorporated into a phytophagous insect's diet depends on both the insect's ability to colonize the novel host and the host plant's susceptibility to the insect. The latter, again, will be influenced by the genetic structure of the host plant. Cirsium palustre (marsh thistle) is heavily infested by the tephritid fly Tephritis conura in northern Britain, whereas infestation is not only absent in southern England, but also absent on the European continent where T. conura is common on other Cirsium. To understand why regional infestation patterns evolve, we studied how genetic structure and phylogeographic ancestry of C. palustre are related to the probability of…
Gene flow in the European coal tit, Periparus ater (Aves: Passeriformes): Low among Mediterranean populations but high in a continental contact zone
Abstract Extant phylogeographical patterns of Palearctic terrestrial vertebrates are generally believed to have originated from glacial range fragmentation. Post-Pleistocene range expansions have led to the formation of secondary contact zones among genetically distinct taxa. For coal tits (Periparus ater), such a contact zone has been localized in Germany. In this study, we quantified gene flow between Fennoscandian and southern European coal tits using a set of 13 microsatellite loci. STRUCTURE analysis revealed four genetic clusters, two occurring on Mediterranean islands. German populations were genetically admixed but introgression of southern alleles was evident for Fennoscandian popu…
Where is the line? Phylogeography and secondary contact of western Palearctic coal tits (Periparus ater: Aves, Passeriformes, Paridae)
In this study, a phylogeographic scenario of the coal tit (Periparus ater) was reconstructed based on a fragment of the mitochondrial control region, and within- and between-population genetic diversity was analysed with a focus on the western Palearctic breeding range. We inferred a first pan-European delimitation of a postulated secondary contact zone among coal tits from the north-eastern Palearctic ater subspecies group and those from the south-western Palearctic abietum group. Generally, between-population differentiation was greatest in the Mediterranean range, which was explained by a greater separation in multiple Pleistocene refuge areas compared to the lower differentiation across…
Improved sampling at the subspecies level solves a taxonomic dilemma – A case study of two enigmatic Chinese tit species (Aves, Passeriformes, Paridae, Poecile)
Abstract A recent full species-level phylogeny of tits, titmice and chickadees (Paridae) has placed the Chinese endemic black-bibbed tit (Poecile hypermelaenus) as the sister to the Palearctic willow tit (P. montanus). Because this sister-group relationship is in striking disagreement with the traditional affiliation of P. hypermelaenus close to the marsh tit (P. palustris) we tested this phylogenetic hypothesis in a multi-locus analysis with an extended taxon sampling including sixteen subspecies of willow tits and marsh tits. As a taxonomic reference we included type specimens in our analysis. The molecular genetic study was complemented with an analysis of biometric data obtained from mu…
Data from: Gene flow in the European coal tit, Periparus ater (Aves: Passeriformes): low among Mediterranean populations but high in a continental contact zone
Extant phylogeographic patterns of Palearctic terrestrial vertebrates are generally believed to have originated from glacial range fragmentation. Post-Pleistocene range expansions have led to the formation of secondary contact zones among genetically distinct taxa. For coal tits (Periparus ater), such a contact zone has been localized in Germany. In this study, we quantified gene flow between Fennoscandian and southern European coal tits using a set of 13 microsatellite loci. STRUCTURE analysis revealed four genetic clusters two of these on Mediterranean islands. German populations were genetically admixed but introgression of southern alleles was evident for Fennoscandian populations. In t…