Theses and Dissertations

Jared Cole

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Counterman, Brian A.

Committee Member

Hoffmann, Federico G.

Committee Member

Brown, Matthew W.

Date of Degree

5-3-2019

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Biological Sciences

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Abstract

Identifying the forces responsible for driving genomic divergence during speciation is a major goal of research in evolutionary biology. Thus, many efforts have focused on disentangling these forces by modeling the evolutionary histories of interacting populations. Here, population genomic datasets and a diffusion approximation method is used to model the demographic scenarios that influence divergence between Heliconius erato and the incipient species Heliconius himera. The models support an isolation-with-migration scenario, with relatively low and heterogeneous rates of introgression between H. himera and H. erato cyrbia. Additionally, the models suggest a history of selection driving divergence and introgression patterns among H. himera and H. erato. Collectively, these results support H. himera’s status as an incipient species within the H. erato radiation and highlight the interplay of selection and demographic history in shaping heterogeneous patterns of genomic divergence between hybridizing species.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/21100

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