International: Collaborative Advancement in Analytical and Theoretical Metapopulation Statistical Genetics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project supports a collaboration between Dr. Douglas Taylor and his student, Mr. Peter Fields, in the Department of Biology at the University of Virginia, and Dr. Oscar Gaggiotti in the Laboratoire d?Ecologie Alpine at the University of Grenoble in France. This proposal will fund two long-term visits for Fields to the University of Grenoble in the Fall of 2011 and Summer of 2012. The collaboration will develop analytical and computational methods to analyze genetic data from natural populations. The proposed research leverages Gaggiotti?s expertise in population genetic analysis and software design and an unparalleled 24+ year metapopulation dataset of the angiosperm Silene latifolia. This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to refine statistical tools and ground truth population genetics methods with a long-term metapopulation dataset. The proposed research will allow for better understanding of the genetics of spatially distributed populations, or metapopulations. Additionally, the proposed research will parse out the relative roles of random and selective forces in shaping patterns of genetic diversity. Understanding evolutionary processes in metapopulations is of practical and applied importance for conservation biology, invasion biology, and for understanding potential responses to habitat fragmentation. In terms of deliverables, resulting software will be made freely available to researchers, being published under the GNU General Public License and distributed by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/).