How the size of an organ is established and altered during evolution is poorly understood. The ovary of fruit flies of the genus Drosophila serves as an interesting model for understanding organ size evolution, as the ...

The coalescent is a stochastic process that describes the genetic ancestry ofindividuals sampled from a population. It is one of the main tools of theoretical population genetics and has been used as the basis of many ...

Mutualistic symbioses have enabled the colonization of novel habitats and niches in a large array of eukaryotic and bacterial taxa. Reliable mechanisms of symbiont transmission between host generations are necessary to ...

The study of life histories is fundamental to understanding why some organisms live for a very short time while others live for a long time, why some produce thousands of offspring while others produce one, or why some ...

Understanding how complex, adaptive behavior evolves is a major goal of biological research. Phenotypic differences between closely-related species often arise due to evolution by natural selection and can be a powerful ...

Conflict is ever present in nature, serving as an essential driver of adaptation. In this dissertation I examine both intra- and interpersonal conflicts as they occur at the genetic level. Specifically, what happens when, ...

Polyploidy occurs throughout eukaryotes, and is particularly prevalent among plants. Nearly 40% of all vascular plant species are thought to be recent polyploids, including a number of invasive species and familiar crops. ...

Whole-genome duplication (WGD), which leads to polyploidy, has been implicated in speciation and biological novelty. In plants, many species have experienced historical bouts of WGD or exhibit extant ploidy variation, which ...

This thesis consists of three chapters on different topics. Chapter 1: We demonstrate the advantages of using information at many unlinked loci in order to better calibrate estimates of the time to the most recent common ...

Temperature plays an important role in shaping the form and function of every species. Ectothermic organisms are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in their thermal environment. Their inability to produce appreciable ...