Browsing by Subject "evolution"
Now showing items 1-20 of 29
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Adaptive Motivations Drive Concern for Common Good Resources
(2019)Humans universally demonstrate intrinsically motivated prosocial behavior towards kin, non-kin ingroup members, and strangers. However, humans struggle to extend the same prosocial behavior to more abstract concepts like ... -
Advances in Bayesian Modeling of Protein Structure Evolution
(2018)This thesis contributes to a statistical modeling framework for protein sequence and structure evolution. An existing Bayesian model for protein structure evolution is extended in two unique ways. Each of these model extensions ... -
Bayesian Structural Phylogenetics
(2013)This thesis concerns the use of protein structure to improve phylogenetic inference. There has been growing interest in phylogenetics as the number of available DNA and protein sequences continues to grow rapidly and demand ... -
Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America
(2021)Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America undertakes the first full-length historical overview of the intelligent design movement (ID), a popular and influential antievolutionary ideology prominent at ... -
Determining the size of the male-specific region in the genome of the scuttle fly, Megaselia scalaris, a potential model system for the earliest stages of sex chromosome evolution
(2012-09-06)Modern day whole-genome sequencing and the ability to make comparisons across many taxa have significantly advanced the study of sex chromosome evolution. The scuttle fly, Megaselia scalaris, is an appropriate model system ... -
Ecological and Evolutionary Factors Shaping Animal-Bacterial Symbioses: Insights from Insects & Gut Symbionts
(2017)Animal bacterial symbioses are pervasive and underlie the success of many groups. Here, I study ecological and evolutionary factors that shape interactions between a host and gut associates. In this dissertation, I interrogate ... -
Elucidating the Evolutionary Origin of the Neural Crest
(2016-05-05)The evolutionary origin of the neural crest, an embryonic stem cell population unique to vertebrates, has eluded biologists since its discovery. The neural crest is characterized by its epithelial to mesenchymal transition ... -
Evolutionary Dynamics in an Individual Spatial and a Mean Field Differential Equation Host-Pathogen Model
(2013-04-30)We examine a host-pathogen model in which three types of species exist: empty sites, healthy hosts, and infected hosts. In this model six different transitions can occur: empty sites can be colonized by healthy hosts, healthy ... -
Evolutionary Genetics of Reduced Nectar Production in the Selfing Morning Glory, Ipomoea lacunosa (Convolvulaceae)
(2021)Nectar production is one of several traits that are reduced in flowering plants that display the selfing syndrome, a suite of trait reductions often associated with the transition from outcross-fertilization to ... -
Faith, Fact, and Behaviorism
(BEHAVIOR ANALYST, 2013) -
From divots to swales: Hillslope sediment transport across divers length scales
(2010)In soil-mantled steeplands, soil motions associated with creep, ravel, rain splash, soil slips, tree throw, and rodent activity are patchy and intermittent and involve widely varying travel distances. To describe the collective ... -
Gene Duplication and the Evolution of Silenced Chromatin in Yeasts
(2010)In <italic>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</italic>, proper maintenance of haploid cell identity requires the SIR complex to mediate the silenced chromatin found at the cryptic mating-type loci, <italic>HML</italic> and ... -
Gene expression in developing fibres of Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) was massively altered by domestication
(2010)Background: Understanding the evolutionary genetics of modern crop phenotypes has a dual relevance to evolutionary biology and crop improvement. Modern upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) was developed following thousands ... -
Genome-wide Cross-species Analysis Linking Open Chromatin, Differential Expression and Positive Selection
(2012)Deciphering the molecular mechanisms driving the phenotypic differences between humans and primates remains a daunting challenge. Mutations found in protein coding DNA alone has not been able to explain these phenotypic ... -
Genomic Basis for a Developmental Life History Switch in the Sea Urchin Heliocidaris erythrogramma
(2021)Lecithotrophic (non-feeding) larval development has independently evolved numerous times in marine invertebrates from an ancestral, planktotrophic (feeding) larval state. The evolution of this developmental mode in a species ... -
Guyanagaster, a New Wood-Decaying Sequestrate Fungal Genus Related to Armillaria (Physalacriaceae, Agaricales, Basidiomycota)
(2010)Premise of the study : Sequestrate basidiomycete fungi (e. g. "gasteromycetes") have foregone ballistospory and evolved alternative, often elaborate mechanisms of basidiospore dispersal with highly altered basidioma morphology. ... -
Molecular Poltergeists: Mitochondrial DNA Copies (numts) in Sequenced Nuclear Genomes
(2010)The natural transfer of DNA from mitochondria to the nucleus generates nuclear copies of mitochondrial DNA (numts) and is an ongoing evolutionary process, as genome sequences attest. In humans, five different numts cause ... -
Ordered structure of the transcription network inherited from the yeast whole-genome duplication
(2010)Background: Gene duplication, a major evolutionary path to genomic innovation, can occur at the scale of an entire genome. One such "whole-genome duplication" (WGD) event among the Ascomycota fungi gave rise to genes with ... -
Phylogenetic relationships of the enigmatic fern families Hymenophyllopsidaceae and Lophosoriaceae: Evidence from rbcL nucleotide sequences
(Plant Systematics and Evolution, 1999-01-01)Nucleotide sequences from rbcL were used to infer relationships of Lophosoriaceae and Hymenophyllopsidaceae. The phylogenetic positions of these two monotypic fern families have been debated, and neither group had been included ... -
Punctuated evolution and transitional hybrid network in an ancestral cell cycle of fungi.
(Elife, 2016-05-10)Although cell cycle control is an ancient, conserved, and essential process, some core animal and fungal cell cycle regulators share no more sequence identity than non-homologous proteins. Here, we show that evolution along ...
