The recombination landscape of the barn owl, from families to populations.

Homologous recombination is a meiotic process that generates diversity along the genome and interacts with all evolutionary forces. Despite its importance, studies of recombination landscapes are lacking due to methodological limitations and limited data. Frequently used approaches include linkage mapping based on familial data that provides sex-specific broad-scale estimates of realized recombination and inferences based on population linkage disequilibrium that reveal a more fine-scale resolution of the recombination landscape, albeit dependent on the effective population size and the selective forces acting on the population.

The genomic architecture of continuous plumage colour variation in the European barn owl ().

The maintenance of colour variation in wild populations has long fascinated evolutionary biologists, although most studies have focused on discrete traits exhibiting rather simple inheritance patterns and genetic architectures. However, the study of continuous colour traits and their potentially oligo- or polygenic genetic bases remains rare in wild populations. We studied the genetics of the continuously varying white-to-rufous plumage coloration of the European barn owl () using a genome-wide association approach on the whole-genome data of 75 individuals.

Genomic consequences of colonisation, migration and genetic drift in barn owl insular populations of the eastern Mediterranean.

The study of insular populations was key in the development of evolutionary theory. The successful colonisation of an island depends on the geographic context, and specific characteristics of the organism and the island, but also on stochastic processes. As a result, apparently identical islands may harbour populations with contrasting histories.