Publications by authors named "Deren A Eaton"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how climate changes during the Pleistocene and gene flow (introgression) have influenced the evolution of the Lentago clade of Viburnum, focusing on five closely related species that coexist in the same regions.
  • Researchers used genetic data from 103 individuals to analyze the relationships and genetic diversity within the species, alongside historical flowering data from herbarium specimens to understand the role of flowering time in species isolation.
  • Findings reveal a strong link between flowering time and latitude, with southern populations blooming earlier, and in mixed areas, species flower in a staggered manner, suggesting that differences in flowering time help maintain separation between species, especially in response to climate changes.
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Introgressive hybridization challenges the concepts we use to define species and infer phylogenetic relationships. Methods for inferring historical introgression from the genomes of extant species, such as ABBA-BABA tests, are widely used, however, their results can be easily misinterpreted. Because these tests are inherently comparative, they are sensitive to the effects of missing data (unsampled species) and nonindependence (hierarchical relationships among species).

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The nature and timing of evolution of niche differentiation among closely related species remains an important question in ecology and evolution. The American live oak clade, Virentes, which spans the unglaciated temperate and tropical regions of North America and Mesoamerica, provides an instructive system in which to examine speciation and niche evolution. We generated a fossil-calibrated phylogeny of Virentes using RADseq data to estimate divergence times and used nuclear microsatellites, chloroplast sequences and an intron region of nitrate reductase (NIA-i3) to examine genetic diversity within species, rates of gene flow among species and ancestral population size of disjunct sister species.

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Determining phylogenetic relationships among very closely related species has remained a challenge for evolutionary biologists due to interlocus phylogenetic discordance and the difficulty of obtaining variable markers. Here, we used a Genotyping-by-Sequencing (GBS) approach to sample a reduced representation genomic data set and infer the phylogeny of seven closely related species in the genus Carex (Cyperaceae). Past attempts to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships among these species produced conflicting and poorly-supported results.

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Previous phylogenetic studies in oaks (Quercus, Fagaceae) have failed to resolve the backbone topology of the genus with strong support. Here, we utilize next-generation sequencing of restriction-site associated DNA (RAD-Seq) to resolve a framework phylogeny of a predominantly American clade of oaks whose crown age is estimated at 23-33 million years old. Using a recently developed analytical pipeline for RAD-Seq phylogenetics, we created a concatenated matrix of 1.

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Motivation: Restriction-site-associated genomic markers are a powerful tool for investigating evolutionary questions at the population level, but are limited in their utility at deeper phylogenetic scales where fewer orthologous loci are typically recovered across disparate taxa. While this limitation stems in part from mutations to restriction recognition sites that disrupt data generation, an additional source of data loss comes from the failure to identify homology during bioinformatic analyses. Clustering methods that allow for lower similarity thresholds and the inclusion of indel variation will perform better at assembling RADseq loci at the phylogenetic scale.

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Phylogenetic relationships among recently diverged species are often difficult to resolve due to insufficient phylogenetic signal in available markers and/or conflict among gene trees. Here we explore the use of reduced-representation genome sequencing, specifically in the form of restriction-site associated DNA (RAD), for phylogenetic inference and the detection of ancestral hybridization in non-model organisms. As a case study, we investigate Pedicularis section Cyathophora, a systematically recalcitrant clade of flowering plants in the broomrape family (Orobanchaceae).

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