Friday, January 22, 2010

Tracing the origins of rescued chimpanzees reveals widespread chimpanzee hunting in Cameroon

An analysis of mtDNA sequences and microsatellite loci in chimpanzees from the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon reveals the widespread presence of chimpanzee hunting within the country

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Highly Punctuated Patterns of Population Structure on the X Chromosome and Implications for African Evolutionary History

87% of X-linked HapMap SNPs within the top 1% of FST values cluster into five distinct loci; analyses and resequencing data suggest that these five regions have been substrates of recent and strong adaptive evolution. Evolutionary implications are discussed.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

An explicit signature of balancing selection for color-vision variation in new world monkeys

Using fecal DNA, the authors were able to sequence the L-M (red-green) opsin gene in wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and capuchins (Cebus capucinus). They found that these populations showed greater polymorphism in this gene than other DNA reference points, providing evidence that balancing selection is acting on color vision in New World primates.