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2016-01-01

Sperling, Felix A. H., Murray, Brent W., Batista, Philip D., Janes, Jasmine K., Boone, Celia K.

Assessments of population genetic structure and demographic history have traditionally been based on neutral markers while explicitly excluding adaptive markers. In this study, we compared the utility of putatively adaptive and neutral single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for inferring mountain...

2013-01-01

Chan, Simon K., Henderson, Hannah, Sperling, Felix A. H., Docking, Roderick T., Palmquist, Diana L., Nguyen, Anh, Zhao, Yongjun, Birol, Inanc, Pandoh, Pawan, Li, Maria, Taylor, Greg A., Liao, Nancy Y., Moore, Richard, Bohlmann, Joerg, Janes, Jasmine K., Jackman, Shaun D., Yuen, Macaire M. S., Huber, Dezene P. W., Jones, Steven J. M., Keeling, Christopher I.

Background The mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, is the most serious insect pest of western North American pine forests. A recent outbreak destroyed more than 15 million hectares of pine forests, with major environmental effects on forest health, and economic effects on the...

2019-01-01

Tsui, Clement K. M., Beauseigle, Stephanie, Ojeda Alayon, Dario I., Rice, Adrianne V., Cooke, Janice E. K., Sperling, Felix A. H., Roe, Amanda D., Hamelin, Richard C.

The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, 1902) forms beneficial symbiotic associations with fungi. Here we explored the fine-scale spatial genetic structure of three of those fungi using single nucleotide polymorphism. We found that single mated pairs of beetles carry not...

2014-01-01

Sperling, Felix A. H., Murray, Brent W., Li, Yisu, Coltman, David W., Bohlmann, Joerg, Janes, Jasmine K., Cooke, Janice E. K., Boone, Celia K., Huber, Dezene P.W., Keeling, Christopher I., Yuen, Macaire M. S.

The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins), a major pine forest pest native to western North America, has extended its range north and eastward during an ongoing outbreak. Determining how the MPB has expanded its range to breach putative barriers, whether physical...

2021-07-01

Shegelski, Victor A., Evenden, Maya L., Huber, Dezene P. W., Sperling, Felix A. H.

Dispersal flights by the mountain pine beetle have allowed range expansion and major damage to pine stands in western Canada. We asked what the genetic and transcriptional basis of mountain pine beetle dispersal capacity is. Using flight mills, RNA-seq and a targeted association study, we...

2012-01-01

Cullingham, Catherine I., Sperling, Felix A. H., Coltman, David W., Roe, Amanda D.

Irruptive forest insect pests cause considerable ecological and economic damage, and their outbreaks have been increasing in frequency and severity. We use a phylogeographic approach to understand the location and progression of an outbreak by the MPB (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins), an...

2019-01-01

Trevoy, Stephen A.L., Janes, Jasmine K., Muirhead, Kevin, Sperling, Felix A. H.

Genetic surveys of the population structure of species can be used as resources for exploring their genomic architecture. By adjusting filtering assumptions, genomewide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) datasets can be reused to give new insights into the genetic basis of divergence and...

2021-01-01

Shegelski, Victor A., Campbell, Erin O., Thompson, Kirsten M., Whitehouse, Caroline M., Sperling, Felix A. H.

The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) is a significant destructive force in the pine forests of western Canada and has the capacity to spread east into a novel host tree species, jack pine (Pinaceae). New populations have been documented in central...

2011

Roe, Amanada D., James, Patrick M. A., Cooke, Janice E. K., Sperling, Felix A. H., Rice, Adrianne V.

Symbiont redundancy in obligate insect–fungal systems is thought to buffer the insect host against symbiont loss and to extend the environmental conditions under which the insect can persist. The mountain pine beetle is associated with at least three well-known and putatively obligate...

2011-01-01

Sperling, Felix A. H., Hamelin, Richard C., Murray, Brent W., James, Patrick M. A., Coltman, Dave W.

Spatial patterns of genetic variation in interacting species can identify shared features that are important to gene flow and can elucidate co-evolutionary relationships. We assessed concordance in spatial genetic variation between the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) and one of its...