DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Demographic and Biogeographic History of Deciduous Forest Vertebrates of the Central United States

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This project uses DNA variation to address the evolutionary history of two deciduous forest vertebrates, eastern chipmunks and white-footed mice, in the central US. During glacial maxima large areas of the central US were covered by an extensive ice sheet. Many species that currently inhabit these once ice-covered regions must have colonized from areas beyond the the ice. Dr. Kenneth Paige and Kevin Rowe will address how contemporary populations and communities in these regions were established. Genetic variation will indicate the number of population sources and the direction of colonizations. Multiple molecular markers from the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes can test various hypotheses about the role of selection and population dynamics in shaping genetic variation.The contemporary distribution of biological diversity cannot be understood without knowledge of how organisms responded to the geological and climatic history of Earth; these are central concerns to ecology and evolutionary biology. Results from this project will help recover how species have responded to known climatic changes and how communities are assembled over geological time.