3. Spatially explicit demographic modeling and model tests
Q. He, D. Edwards, L. L. Knowles. 2013. Integrative testing of how environments from the past to the present shape genetic structure across landscapes. Evolution. 67:3386-3402
Population genetic structures can be a representative of contemporary habitat suitability and connectivity, a remnant of historical processes or both. Without the explicit modeling of temporal shifts of habitats and the demographic processes of range contraction, expansion and recolonization, the impact of historical processes may be overlooked or misidentified in the understanding of the diversity structures.
By integrating distributional, demographic, and coalescent (iDDC) models, we evaluated the relative contributions of current or past environmental factors towards current patterns of population genetic variations.