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Inbreeding depression is a major driver of mating system evolution and has critical implications for population viability. Theoretical and empirical attention has been paid to predicting how inbreeding depression varies with population size. Lower inbreeding depression is predicted in small populations at equilibrium, primarily due to higher inbreeding rates facilitating purging and/or fixation of deleterious alleles (drift load), but predictions at demographic and genetic disequilibrium are less clear. In this study, we experimentally evaluate how lifetime inbreeding depression and drift load, estimated by heterosis, vary with census (N c ) and effective (estimated as genetic diversity, H e ) population size across six populations of the biennial Sabatia angularis as well as present novel models of inbreeding depression and heterosis under varying demographic scenarios at disequilibrium (fragmentation, bottlenecks, disturbances). Our experimental study reveals high average inbreeding depression and heterosis across populations. Across our small sample, heterosis declined with H e , as predicted, whereas inbreeding depression did not vary with H e and actually decreased with N c . Our theoretical results demonstrate that inbreeding depression and heterosis levels can vary widely across populations at disequilibrium despite similar H e and highlight that joint demographic and genetic dynamics are key to predicting patterns of genetic load in nonequilibrium systems., (© 2016 The Author(s). Evolution © 2016 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

Speciation in phytophagous insects is commonly associated with shifts in host use. Using a phylogenetic framework to identify recently diverged taxa that have undergone a radical host shift, this study focuses on how reconstruction of the historical demography of a species, in conjunction with branching patterns between species, provides insight into mode of speciation. Analyses of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I sequences indicate that the leaf beetle Ophraella communa exhibits significant population structure, as shown by patterns of genealogical relationships among mitochondrial haplotypes and high F ST -values. However, the absence of regional localization of old clades of haplotypes, negative Tajima's D, and unimodal rather than bimodal frequency distribution of the number of pairwise differences between sequences suggests an absence of long-term barriers to gene flow. Furthermore, we found no evidence of isolation by distance. This pattern of genetic variation is consistent with episodes of gene flow on a large geographic scale, perhaps owing to Pleistocene changes in climate. Ophraella communa and its sister species O. bilineata diverged during the early Pleistocene. The evidence of dynamic population structure in O. communa, potentially including episodic but massive gene flow, suggests that reproductive isolation evolved quite rapidly on a localized geographic scale, because speciation would probably have been reversed by gene flow if the evolution of reproductive isolation had been prolonged. That is, gene flow occasioned by range shifts during the Pleistocene would likely have interrupted speciation unless it occurred very rapidly. Sequence diversity implies a large effective population size (> 10 6 ) in both O. communa and O. bilineata. However, a model based on a drastic bottleneck did not have a lower likelihood than a model with no bottleneck, simply because the time since speciation has been great enough for coalescence to a single ancestor that existed after the speciation event. Sequence diversity in itself, without reference to the time since speciation, cannot provide evidence on the demography of speciation., (© 1999 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

Although highly variable loci, such as microsatellite loci, are revolutionizing both evolutionary and conservation biology, data from these loci need to be carefully evaluated. First, because these loci often have very high within-population heterozygosity, the magnitude of differentiation measures may be quite small. For example, maximum G ST values for populations with no common alleles at highly variable loci may be small and are at maximum less than the average within-population homozygosity. As a result, measures that are variation independent are recommended for highly variable loci. Second, bottlenecks or a reduction in population size can generate large genetic distances in a short time for these loci. In this case, the genetic distance may be corrected for low variation in a population and tests to detect bottlenecks are advised. Third, statistically significant differences may not reflect biologically meaningful differences both because the patterns of adaptive loci may not be correlated with highly variable loci and statistical power with these markers is so high. As an example of this latter effect, the statistical power to detect a one-generation bottleneck of different sizes for different numbers of highly variable loci is discussed. All of these concerns need to be incorporated in the utilization and interpretation of patterns of highly variable loci for both evolutionary and conservation biology., (© 1999 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

Selection for increased morphometric shape (ratio of wing length to thorax width) was compared between control (nonbottlenecked) populations and bottlenecked populations founded with two male-female pairs of flies. Contrary to neutral expectation, selectional response was not reduced in bottlenecked populations, and the mean realized heritabilities and additive genetic variances were higher for the bottlenecked lines than for the nonbottlenecked lines. Additive genetic variances based on these realized heritabilities were consistent with independent estimates of genetic variances based on parent-offspring covariances. Joint scaling tests applied to the crosses between selected lines and their controls revealed significant nonadditive components of genetic variance in the ancestor, which were not detected in the crosses involving bottlenecked lines. The nonbottlenecked lines responded principally by changes in one trait or the other (wing length or thorax width) but not in both, and regardless of which trait responded, larger trait size was dominant and epistatic to smaller size. Stabilizing selection for morphometric shape in the ancestor likely molded the genetic architecture to include nonadditive genetic effects., (© 1995 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

We investigate kin-structured migration and its effects on patterns of genetic variation in cytoplasmic and nuclear genomes. We show that colonization events involving close relatives, such as those that might characterize range expansion and the invasion of new habitats, can change the patterns of nuclear and cytoplasmic genetic variation expected at equilibrium. The difference in the patterns of variation between the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes suggests that it may be possible to estimate the time of the effective kin-structured colonization event. Observations in several taxa are discussed in light of these findings and in relation to their known geological history., (© 1994 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

The extent of genome-wide restructuring predicted in bottleneck models of speciation is addressed in assays of non-reproductive behavior in lines of the housefly. After five serial founder-flush cycles of one of three sizes (1, 4, or 16 pairs), each bottleneck line showed significant differentiation from the outbred control in ambulatory levels and grooming sequences in videotaped records of precopulatory activity. Only one line (4-pair) showed overall lethargy which was associated to inbreeding depression in egg-to-adult viability, thus exemplifying a case of probable extinction due to bottlenecks. The two most hyperactive lines (1- and 16-pair) showed very similar directions of differentiation from the control in locomotor activity and grooming behavior, as well as in mating behavior evaluated from a separate study. This high congruence suggested that directional selection toward the phenotypic optima of the ancestor operated on the bottleneck populations and that a 10-fold difference in theoretical inbreeding coefficients did not affect the magnitude of response. The remaining two bottleneck lines showed some independence from these general trajectories, their divergence along minor axes of ancestral intercorrelation structure possibly being more important to the formation of new species. Significant perturbations of the thresholds for execution of grooming and locomotor movements suggested increased evolutionary potential for ritualization (i.e., sexual selection for adoption of non-reproductive behavior into courtship repertoire) due to bottlenecks., (© 1992 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)