Catastrophic events can have profound effects on the demography of a population and consequently, on genetic diversity. The dynamics of post‐catastrophic recovery as well as the role of sexual versus asexual reproduction in buffering the effects of massive perturbations remain poorly understood, in part because the opportunity to document genetic diversity before and after such events is rare. Six

Globally, farmers cultivate and maintain crop landraces (i.e., traditional varieties). Landraces contain unique diversity shaped in part by natural and human‐mediated selection and are an indispensable resource for farmers. Since environmental conditions change with elevation, crop landraces grown along elevational gradients have provided ideal locations to explore patterns of local adaptation. To

Precision medicine relies on targeting specific somatic alterations present in a patient’s tumour. However, the extent to which germline ancestry may influence the somatic burden of disease has received little attention. We estimated the genetic ancestry of non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and performed an in‐depth analysis of the influence of genetic ancestry on the evolutionary disease

Evolutionary studies of insect pests improve our ability to anticipate problems in agricultural ecosystems, such as pest outbreaks, control failures, or expansions of the host range. Here, we investigated the mechanisms underlying the evolutionary processes behind the recent census size expansion and local adaptation of Chrysodeixis includens. First, we sequenced mitochondrial markers to conduct a

Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas, endemic to coastal Asia, has been translocated globally throughout the past century, resulting in self‐sustaining introduced populations (naturalized). Oyster aquaculture industries in many parts of the world depend on commercially available seed (hatchery‐farmed) or naturalized/wild oysters to move onto a farm (naturalized‐farmed). It is therefore important to understand

Key topics in the study of host–microbe interactions—such as the prevention of drug resistance and the exploitation of beneficial effects of bacteria—would benefit from concerted efforts with both mechanistic and evolutionary approaches. But due to differences in intellectual traditions, insights gained in one field rarely benefit the other. Here, we develop a conceptual and analytical framework for

Genetic data can help elucidate the dynamics of biological invasions, which are fueled by the constant expansion of international trade. The introduction of European gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar dispar) into North America is a classic example of human‐aided invasion that has caused tremendous damage to North American temperate forests. Recently, the even more destructive Asian gypsy moth (mainly L

Many animals have evolved toxins to defend themselves from predators and hunt prey. These toxins have been honed over millions of years by the unique selective pressures on each organism leading to a vast array of potent bioactive compounds, many of which have therapeutic potential. Animal extracts have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years, and in the past fifty years, hundreds of

Individuals moving in heterogeneous environments can improve their fitness considerably by habitat choice. Induction by past exposure, genetic preference alleles and comparison of local performances can all drive this decision‐making process. Despite the importance of habitat choice mechanisms for eco‐evolutionary dynamics in metapopulations, we lack insights on the connection of their cue with its

Much of the research in biology aims to understand the origin of diversity. Naturally, ecological diversity was the first object of study, but we now have the necessary tools to probe diversity at molecular scales. The inherent differences in how we study diversity at different scales caused the disciplines of biology to be organized around these levels, from molecular biology to ecology. Here we illustrate

CRISPR‐based gene drives bias inheritance in their favour by inducing double‐stranded breaks (DSBs) at wild‐type homologous loci and using the drive transgene as a repair template—converting drive heterozygotes into homozygotes. Recent studies have shown that alternate end‐joining repair mechanisms produce cut‐resistant alleles that rapidly induce drive failure. Multiplexing—simultaneously targeting

Ecological and evolutionary concepts have been widely adopted to understand host–pathogen dynamics, and more recently, integrated into wildlife disease management. Cancer is a ubiquitous disease that affects most metazoan species; however, the role of oncogenic phenomena in eco‐evolutionary processes and its implications for wildlife management and conservation remains undeveloped. Despite the pervasive

Agriculture has long employed phylogenetic rules whereby farmers are encouraged to rotate taxonomically unrelated plants in shared soil. Although this forms a central tenet of sustainable agriculture, strangely, this on‐farm ‘rule of thumb’ has never been rigorously tested in a scientific framework. To experimentally evaluate the relationship between phylogenetic distance and crop performance, we used

Tumors result from genetic and epigenetic alterations that change cellular survival and differentiation probabilities, promoting clonal dominance. Subsequent genetic and selection processes in tumors allow cells to lose their tissue fidelity and migrate to other parts of the body, turning tumors into cancer. However, the relationship between genetic damage and cancer is not linear, showing remarkable

Mismatches between the traits of a colonizing population and a novel habitat can generate strong selection, potentially resulting in rapid adaptation. However, for most colonization events, it can be difficult to detect rapid adaptation or distinguish it from non‐adaptive evolutionary changes. Here I take advantage of a replicated prairie restoration experiment to compare recently established plant

Habitat fragmentation imperils the persistence of many functionally important species, with climate change a new threat to local persistence due to climate‐niche mismatching. Predicting the evolutionary trajectory of species essential to ecosystem function under future climates is challenging but necessary for prioritizing conservation investments. We use a combination of population genetics and niche

Due to the mediating role of body size in determining fitness, the ‘bigger is better’ hypothesis still pervades evolutionary ecology despite evidence that natural selection on phenotypic traits varies in time and space. For Pacific salmon (genus Oncorhynchus), most individual studies quantify selection across a narrow range of sizes and ages; therefore, uncertainties remain concerning how selection

The warm‐temperate and subtropical climate zones of East Asia are a hotspot of plant species richness and endemism, including a noticeable number of species‐poor Tertiary relict tree genera. However, little is understood about when East Asian Tertiary relict plants diversified, how they responded demographically to past environmental change, and to what extent their current genomic composition (and

Coral reefs are suffering a major decline due to the environmental constraints imposed by climate change. Over the last 20 years, three major coral bleaching events occurred in concomitance with anomalous heatwaves, provoking a severe loss of coral cover worldwide. The conservation strategies for preserving reefs, as they are implemented now, cannot cope with global climatic shifts. Consequently, researchers

Epigenetic processes manage gene expression and products in a real‐time manner, allowing a single genome to display different phenotypes. In this paper, we discussed the relevance of assessing the different sources of epigenetic variation in natural populations. For a given genotype, the epigenetic variation could be environmentally induced or occur randomly. Strategies developed by organisms to face

Metastasis—the ability of cancer cells to disperse throughout the body and establish new tumours at distant locations—is responsible for most cancer‐related deaths. Although both single and clusters of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) have been isolated from cancer patients, CTC clusters are generally associated with higher metastatic potential and worse prognosis. From an evolutionary perspective,

Rivers are fascinating ecosystems in which the eco‐evolutionary dynamics of organisms are constrained by particular features, and biologists have developed a wealth of knowledge about freshwater biodiversity patterns. Over the last 10 years, our group used a holistic approach to contribute to this knowledge by focusing on the causes and consequences of intraspecific diversity in rivers. We conducted

Sustainable fisheries management requires detailed knowledge of population genetic structure. The European sprat is an important commercial fish distributed from Morocco to the Arctic circle, Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black seas. Prior to 2018, annual catch advice on sprat from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) was based on five putative stocks: (a) North Sea, (b) Kattegat–Skagerrak

Weedy rice (Oryza spp.) is a worldwide weed of domesticated rice (O. sativa), considered particularly problematic due to its strong competition with the crop, which leads to reduction of yields and harvest quality. Several studies have established multiple independent origins for weedy rice populations in the U.S. and various parts of Asia; however, the origins of weedy rice in South America have not

Although transmissible cancers have, so far, only been documented in three independent animal groups, they not only impact animals that have high economic, environmental and social significance, but they are also one of the most virulent parasitic life forms. Currently known transmissible cancers traverse terrestrial and marine environments, and are predicted to be more widely distributed across animal

The Anthropocene has witnessed catastrophic amphibian declines across the globe. A multitude of new, primarily human‐induced drivers of decline may lead to extinction, but can also push species onto novel evolutionary trajectories. If these are recognized by amphibian biologists, they can be engaged in conservation actions. Here, we summarize how principles stemming from evolutionary concepts have

Cancer is a widespread disease that affects most of the metazoans. However, cancer development is a slow process and, long before causing the death of the individual, may weaken organisms’ capacities and impair their interactions with other species. Yet, the impact of cancer development on biotic interactions, and over the dynamics of the whole ecosystem, is still largely unexplored. As well, the feedback

The human activities impact on wild animal populations is indicated by eco‐evolutionary and demographic processes, along with their survival and capacity to evolve; consequently, such data can contribute towards enhancing genetic‐based conservation programs. In this context, knowledge on the life‐history and the eco‐evolutionary processes is required to understand extant patterns of population structure

It is increasingly suggested that ecological and evolutionary sciences could inspire novel therapies against cancer but medical evidence of this remains scarce at the moment. The Achilles heel of conventional and targeted anticancer treatments is intrinsic or acquired resistance following Darwinian selection, i.e. treatment toxicity places the surviving cells under intense evolutionary selective pressure

There is increasing demand for sustainable pest management to reduce harmful effects of pesticides on the environment and human health. For pest aphids, biological control with parasitoid wasps provides a welcome alternative, particularly in greenhouses. However, aphids are frequently infected with the heritable bacterial endosymbiont Hamiltonella defensa, which increases resistance to parasitoids

The variance in phenotypic trait values is a product of environmental and genetic variation. The sensitivity of traits to environmental variation has a genetic component and is likely to be under selection. However, there are few studies investigating the evolution of this sensitivity, in part due to the challenges of estimating the environmental variance. The livestock literature provides a wealth

Habitat fragmentation is a major extinction driver. Despite dramatically increasing fragmentation across the globe, its specific impacts on population connectivity across species with differing life histories remain difficult to characterize, let alone quantify. Here, we investigate patterns of population connectivity in six songbird species from Singapore, a highly fragmented tropical rainforest island

Self‐incompatibility (SI) is a self‐recognition genetic system enforcing outcrossing in hermaphroditic flowering plants and results in one of the arguably best understood forms of natural (balancing) selection maintaining genetic variation over long evolutionary times. A rich theoretical and empirical population genetics literature has considerably clarified how the distribution of SI phenotypes translates

Rapid environmental changes impact the global distribution and abundance of species, highlighting the urgency to understand and predict how populations will respond. The analysis of differentially expressed genes has elucidated areas of the genome involved in adaptive divergence to past and present environmental change. Such studies however have been hampered by large numbers of differentially expressed

Many pathogens interact and evolve in communities where more than one host species is present, yet our understanding of host–pathogen specialization is mostly informed by laboratory studies with single species. Managing diseases in the wild, however, requires understanding how host–pathogen specialization affects hosts in diverse communities. Juvenile salmonid mortality in hatcheries caused by infectious

The probability D that a given CRISPR‐based gene drive element contaminates another, non‐target species can be estimated by the following Drive Risk Assessment Quantitative Estimate (DRAQUE) Equation: D = (hyb + transf).express.cut.flank.immune.nonextinct with hyb = probability of hybridization between the target species and a non‐target species transf = probability of horizontal transfer of a piece

Effective resource management depends on our ability to partition diversity into biologically meaningful units. Recent evolutionary divergence, however, can often lead to ambiguity in morphological and genetic differentiation, complicating the delineation of valid conservation units. Such is the case with the “coregonine problem,” where recent postglacial radiations of coregonines into lacustrine habitats

In bacteria, evolution of resistance to one antibiotic is frequently associated with increased resistance (cross‐resistance) or increased susceptibility (collateral sensitivity) to other antibiotics. Cross‐resistance and collateral sensitivity are typically evaluated at the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). However, these susceptibility changes are not well characterized with respect to the mutant

Crop diversity is shaped by biological and social processes interacting at different spatiotemporal scales. Here, we combined population genetics and ethnobotany to investigate date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) diversity in Siwa Oasis, Egypt. Based on interviews with farmers and observation of practices in the field, we collected 149 date palms from Siwa Oasis and 27 uncultivated date palms from abandoned

Population dynamics of marine species that are sessile as adults are driven by oceanographic dispersal of larvae from spawning to nursery grounds. This is mediated by life‐history traits such as the timing and frequency of spawning, larval behaviour and duration, and settlement success. Here, we use 1725 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to study the fine‐scale spatial genetic structure in the

Cancer cells utilize the forces of natural selection to evolve evolvability allowing a constant supply of heritable variation that permits a cancer species to evolutionary track changing hazards and opportunities. Over time, the dynamic tumor ecosystem is exposed to extreme, catastrophic changes in the conditions of the tumor—natural (e.g., loss of blood supply) or imposed (therapeutic). While the

Urban development has major impacts on connectivity among wildlife populations and is thus likely an important factor shaping pathogen transmission in wildlife. However, most investigations of wildlife diseases in urban areas focus on prevalence and infection risk rather than potential effects of urbanization on transmission itself. Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a directly transmitted retrovirus

The resiliency of populations and species to environmental change is dependent on the maintenance of genetic diversity, and as such, quantifying diversity is central to combating ongoing widespread reductions in biodiversity. With the advent of next‐generation sequencing, several methods now exist for resolving fine‐scale population structure, but the comparative performance of these methods for genetic

Many populations of freshwater fishes are threatened with losses, and increasingly, the release of hatchery individuals is one strategy being implemented to support wild populations. However, stocking of hatchery individuals may pose long‐term threats to wild populations, particularly if genetic interactions occur between wild and hatchery individuals. One highly prized sport fish that has been heavily

A major challenge of evolutionary ecology over the next decades is to understand and predict the consequences of the current rapid and important environmental changes on wild populations. Extinction risk of species is linked to populations’ evolutionary potential and to their ability to express adaptive phenotypic plasticity. There is thus a vital need to quantify how selective pressures, quantitative

The ultimate causes of correlated evolution among sites in a genome remain difficult to tease apart. To address this problem directly, we performed a high‐throughput search for correlated evolution among sites associated with resistance to a fluoroquinolone antibiotic using whole‐genome data from clinical strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, before validating our computational predictions experimentally

Human‐mediated transport of species outside their natural range is a rapidly growing threat to biodiversity, particularly for island ecosystems that have evolved in isolation. The genetic structure underpinning island populations will largely determine their response to increased transport and thus help to inform biosecurity management. However, this information is severely lacking for some groups

Identifying the mechanisms involved in the formation and maintenance of species is a central question in evolutionary biology, and distinguishing the selective drivers of populations’ divergence from demographic processes is of particular interest to better understand the speciation process. Hybrid zones are recognized to provide ideal places to investigate the genetic architecture of speciation and

Incorporating species' eco‐evolutionary responses to human‐caused disturbances remains a challenge in marine management efforts. A prerequisite is knowledge of geographic structure and scale of genetic diversity and connectivity—the so‐called seascape genetic patterns. The Baltic Sea is an excellent model system for studies linking seascape genetics with effects of anthropogenic stress. However, seascape

Genetic diversity is the determinant for pest species’ success and vector competence. Understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that determine the genetic diversity is fundamental to help identify the spatial scale at which pest populations are best managed. In the present study, we present the first comprehensive analysis of the genetic diversity and evolution of Rhopalosiphum padi,

Strong and ongoing artificial selection in domestic animals has resulted in amazing phenotypic responses that benefit humans, but often at a cost to an animal's health, and problems related to inbreeding depression, including a higher incidence of cancer. Despite high rates of cancer in domesticated species, little attention has been devoted to exploring the hypothesis that persistent artificial selection

Conservation management strategies for many highly threatened species include conservation breeding to prevent extinction and enhance recovery. Pairing decisions for these conservation breeding programmes can be informed by pedigree data to minimize relatedness between individuals in an effort to avoid inbreeding, maximize diversity and maintain evolutionary potential. However, conservation breeding

DNA barcoding opens new perspectives on the way we document biodiversity. Initially proposed to circumvent the limits of morphological characters to assign unknown individuals to known species, DNA barcoding has been used in a wide array of studies where collecting species identity constitutes a crucial step. The assignment of unknowns to knowns assumes that species are already well identified and

Rising ocean temperatures and extreme temperature events have precipitated declines and local extinctions in many marine species globally, but patterns of loss are often uneven across species ranges for reasons that are poorly understood. Knowledge of the extent of local adaptation and gene flow may explain such patterns and help predict future trajectories under scenarios of climate change. We test

Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, is a considerable global health threat affecting wildlife, livestock, and the general public. In this study, whole‐genome sequence analysis of over 350 B. anthracis isolates was used to establish a new high‐resolution global genotyping framework that is both biogeographically informative and compatible with multiple genomic assays. The data presented

The objective of this study was to test, using a field experiment, the effect of genotypic diversity on productivity of farmed populations (Ancud and Chaica, Chile) of the domesticated red alga Agarophyton chilense (formerly known as Gracilaria chilensis), a species considered as economically important in Chile. Monoclonal and polyclonal (4 and 8 genotypes) subplots were outplanted into the mid intertidal

The giant panda is one of the most endangered mammals in the world, and many studies have revealed their evolutionary adaptation to the local environment (e.g., dietary cellulose and cyanide) on the evidences from population genetics and their gut microbiome. Here, based on the results of our analysis of the giant panda gut microbiome, we concluded that instability and resilience are the two primary

In the open ocean without terrain boundaries, marine invertebrates with pelagic larvae can migrate long distances using ocean currents, suggesting reduced genetic diversification. Contrary to this assumption, however, genetic differentiation is often observed in marine invertebrates. In the present study, we sought to explain how population structure is established in the western Pacific Ocean, where

Invasive species have led to precipitous declines in biodiversity, especially in island systems. Brown (Rattus norvegicus) and black rats (R. rattus) are among the most invasive animals on the planet, with eradication being the primary tool for established island populations. The need for increased research for defining eradication units and monitoring outcomes has been highlighted as a means to maximize

Populations may respond to environmental heterogeneity via evolutionary divergence or phenotypic plasticity. While evolutionary divergence occurs through DNA sequence differences among populations, plastic divergence among populations may be generated by changes in the epigenome. Here, we present the results of a genome‐wide comparison of DNA methylation patterns and genetic structure among four populations