Molecular ecology and natural history of simian foamy virus infection in wild-living chimpanzees.

Identifying microbial pathogens with zoonotic potential in wild-living primates can be important to human health, as evidenced by human immunodeficiency viruses types 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV-2) and Ebola virus. Simian foamy viruses (SFVs) are ancient retroviruses that infect Old and New World monkeys and apes. Although not known to cause disease, these viruses are of public health interest because they have the potential to infect humans and thus provide a more general indication of zoonotic exposure risks.

Complex phylogeographic history of central African forest elephants and its implications for taxonomy.

Background: Previous phylogenetic analyses of African elephants have included limited numbers of forest elephant samples. A large-scale assessment of mitochondrial DNA diversity in forest elephant populations here reveals a more complex evolutionary history in African elephants as a whole than two-taxon models assume.

Results: We analysed hypervariable region 1 of the mitochondrial control region for 71 new central African forest elephants and the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene from 28 new samples and compare these sequences to other African elephant data.

The role of Pleistocene refugia and rivers in shaping gorilla genetic diversity in central Africa.

The role of Pleistocene forest refugia and rivers in the evolutionary diversification of tropical biota has been the subject of considerable debate. A range-wide analysis of gorilla mitochondrial and nuclear variation was used to test the potential role of both refugia and rivers in shaping genetic diversity in current populations. Results reveal strong patterns of regional differentiation that are consistent with refugial hypotheses for central Africa.

Distinguishing gorilla mitochondrial sequences from nuclear integrations and PCR recombinants: guidelines for their diagnosis in complex sequence databases.

Nuclear integrations of mitochondrial DNA (Numts) are widespread in many taxa and if left undetected can confound phylogeny interpretation and bias estimates of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity. This is particularly true in gorillas, where recent studies suggest multiple integrations of the first hypervariable (HV1) domain of the mitochondrial control region. Problems can also arise through the inadvertent incorporation of artifacts produced by in vitro recombination between sequence types during polymerase chain reaction amplification.

Mitochondrial DNA phylogeography of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla).

The geographical distribution of genetic variation within western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) was examined to clarify the population genetic structure and recent evolutionary history of this group. DNA was amplified from shed hair collected from sites across the range of the three traditionally recognized gorilla subspecies: western lowland (G. g.