INSTRUCTIONS:
Instructions for the BYS 318 Vertebrate ReproductionThe assignment centers on an analysis of a recent article from the journal Science, “Rapid speciation via the evolution of pre-mating isolation in the Iberá Seedeater” by Turbek et al. The article is available in the Files tab of Canvas. Notice that the structure of this article places Materials and Methods at the end. It is not necessary to read the M&M closely (we’re not concerned about the details of analyzing genomes), but you should pay attention to reported Results and generally why. I would expect that to fully discuss the findings of this research in context will require about 2000 words.The title of the article tells you what this assignment is about: the evolution and maintenance of pre-mating isolation in a bird. Your assignment is to describe how this pre-mating isolation functions and may have originated, and compare these mechanisms to what we’ve read about this semester. The authors examine the evolutionary and behavioral relationship of two very similar species of bird from Argentina. You must consider and compare the authors’ conclusions to findings by authors with other animals in readings in this class this semester. In particular, you should consider:• Assortative mating;• Various possible aspects of sexual selection such as male plumage, song, territoriality (this includes evidence for color patterns in light wavelengths not visible to humans);• Significance of the pattern of extra pair copulations found;• Chromosomal linkage of sexual selection related genes, especially on the Z chromosome;• The significance of genetic similarities and differences between the two species, and genomic techniques used;• Why might the above observations create reproductive isolation, even those these two species are syntopic (have completely overlapping ranges and habitat usage)?In short, I’m asking you to write a comparative synthesis of evidence presented on the seedeaters compared to work and concepts we’ve read about this semester. This could be along the lines of, how would think Badyaev and Qvarnstrom would interpret these findings, how does this work compare to the findings of Tuttle with white throated sparrows, would the findings about sex linkage in poeciliid fishes be relevant or informative to this research, does the paper on complex phenotypes in salmon by Thompson et al. inform Turbek et al.’s findings. You can and probably should reference ideas by theoreticians as Fish and Trivers to place the article findings in correct context.Jargon:SNP, single-nucleotide polymorphism: A difference of nucleotide found at a specific sequence position in DNA, useful for characterizing relatedness and evolutionary divergence.PCA, principal components analysis. A commonly used statistical technique for ordination – with a data set about different individuals or species, how do you rank their similarity or difference.FST, the fixation index (FST) is a measure of population differentiation due to genetic structure. It is frequently estimated from genetic polymorphism data, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) or microsatellites. It’s reported on a scale from 0 to 1, with a value of 0 meaning total mixing, and a value of 1 meaning total separation.