COOPA20188 - Filogeografía comparativa de ranas neotr

During recent years the scientific community has become more aware of divergence with gene flow. In fact, some studies have shown that introgression of genes from diverging populations could even increase the evolutionary potential and phenotypic diversity. We will study intra-species gene flow between a panel of 20-30 frog species widely distributed across the Amazonian basin and adapted to different niches. This will illustrate the role of adaptation on the long distance gene flow and will allow a better understanding of which environmental factors limit this gene flow in each case. However, we need to use a multi-locus approach to reliably estimate gene flow, and the panels of markers that are useful within species (such as microsatellites or SNPs) rarely provide data that is comparable across species. We will use next generation sequencing technologies to simultaneously sequence a large number of loci that have shown to be useful in intra- and inter-specific comparisons. These data could facilitate comparisons of population structure, gene flow and also population dynamics across species, free from biases associated with the different polymorphism in species-specific markers.