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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...

2020-01-01

Cullingham, Catherine I., Peery, Rhiannon M., Fortier, Colleen E., Mahon, Elizabeth L., Cooke, Janice E. K., Coltman, David W.

Identifying genetic variants responsible for phenotypic variation under selective pressure has the potential to enable productive gains in natural resource conservation and management. Despite this potential, identifying adaptive candidate loci is not trivial, and linking genotype to phenotype is...

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...

2018

Horianopoulos, Linda C., Boone, Celia K., Samarasekera, Gayathri, Kandola, Gurkirat K., Murray, Brent W.

The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is an insect native to western North America; however, its geographical range has recently expanded north in BC and east into Alberta. To understand the population structure in the areas of expansion, 16 gene‐linked microsatellites were screened...

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...

2019-01-01

Burns, Ian, James, Patrick M.A., Coltman, David W., Cullingham, Catherine I.

In north-central Alberta, lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.) form a mosaic hybrid zone, the spatial extent of which remains poorly defined. We sought to refine the genetic and geographic distribution of this hybrid zone in western...

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...

2019-01-01

Cullingham, Catherine I., Janes, Jasmine K., Hamelin, Richard C., James, Patrick M.A., Murray, Brent W., Sperling, Felix A.H.

Environmental change is altering forest insect dynamics worldwide. As these systems change, they pose significant ecological, social, and economic risk through, for example, the loss of valuable habitat, green space, and timber. Our understanding of such systems is often limited by the complexity...