Characterizing the demographic history and prion protein variation to infer susceptibility to chronic wasting disease in a naïve population of white-tailed deer ().

Assessments of the adaptive potential in natural populations are essential for understanding and predicting responses to environmental stressors like climate change and infectious disease. Species face a range of stressors in human-dominated landscapes, often with contrasting effects. White-tailed deer (; deer) are expanding in the northern part of their range following decreasing winter severity and increasing forage availability.

When are hypotheses useful in ecology and evolution?

Research hypotheses have been a cornerstone of science since before Galileo. Many have argued that hypotheses (1) encourage discovery of mechanisms, and (2) reduce bias-both features that should increase transferability and reproducibility. However, we are entering a new era of big data and highly predictive models where some argue the hypothesis is outmoded.

Functional genetic diversity of domestic and wild American mink ().

The release of domestic organisms to the wild threatens biodiversity because the introduction of domestic genes through interbreeding can negatively impact wild conspecifics via outbreeding depression. In North America, farmed American mink () frequently escape captivity, yet the impact of these events on functional genetic diversity of wild mink populations is unclear. We characterized domestic and wild mink in Ontario at 17 trinucleotide microsatellites located in functional genes thought to be associated with traits affected by domestication.

Salinity, not genetic incompatibilities, limits the establishment of the invasive hybrid cattail × in coastal wetlands.

Hybrids of a single pair of parent species can be much more common in some geographical regions than in others. The reasons for this are not well understood, but could help explain processes such as species diversification or the range expansion of invasive hybrids. The widespread cattails and seldom hybridize in some parts of their range, but in other areas produce the dominant hybrid .

Geography, seasonality, and host-associated population structure influence the fecal microbiome of a genetically depauparate Arctic mammal.

The Canadian Arctic is an extreme environment with low floral and faunal diversity characterized by major seasonal shifts in temperature, moisture, and daylight. Muskoxen () are one of few large herbivores able to survive this harsh environment. Microbiome research of the gastrointestinal tract may hold clues as to how muskoxen exist in the Arctic, but also how this species may respond to rapid environmental changes.

Environmentally persistent pathogens present unique challenges for studies of host-pathogen interactions: Reply to Field (2018).

: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.

Development of a genotype-by-sequencing immunogenetic assay as exemplified by screening for variation in red fox with and without endemic rabies exposure.

Pathogens are recognized as major drivers of local adaptation in wildlife systems. By determining which gene variants are favored in local interactions among populations with and without disease, spatially explicit adaptive responses to pathogens can be elucidated. Much of our current understanding of host responses to disease comes from a small number of genes associated with an immune response.

Genetic mating system and mate selection in smallmouth bass.

Mating systems are an important factor influencing the variance in reproductive success among individuals within natural populations and thus have important ecological and evolutionary implications. We used molecular pedigree reconstruction techniques with microsatellite DNA data to characterize the genetic mating system and mate selection in adult smallmouth bass spawning in Lake Opeongo. The genetic mating system of smallmouth bass in this system can be characterized as predominantly monogamous with a low rate of polygynandry particularly among larger individuals.

Profiling the immunome of little brown myotis provides a yardstick for measuring the genetic response to white-nose syndrome.

White-nose syndrome (WNS) has devastated populations of hibernating bats in eastern North America, leading to emergency conservation listings for several species including the previously ubiquitous little brown myotis (). However, some bat populations near the epicenter of the WNS panzootic appear to be stabilizing after initial precipitous declines, which could reflect a selective immunogenetic sweep. To investigate the hypothesis that WNS exerts significant selection on the immunome of affected bat populations, we developed a novel, high-throughput sequence capture assay targeting 138 adaptive, intrinsic, and innate immunity genes of putative adaptive significance, as well as their respective regulatory regions (~370 kbp of genomic sequence/individual).

The other white-nose syndrome transcriptome: Tolerant and susceptible hosts respond differently to the pathogen .

Mitigation of emerging infectious diseases that threaten global biodiversity requires an understanding of critical host and pathogen responses to infection. For multihost pathogens where pathogen virulence or host susceptibility is variable, host-pathogen interactions in tolerant species may identify potential avenues for adaptive evolution in recently exposed, susceptible hosts. For example, the fungus causes white-nose syndrome (WNS) in hibernating bats and is responsible for catastrophic declines in some species in North America, where it was recently introduced.