Specialist versus generalist life histories and nucleotide diversity in Caenorhabditis nematodes.

ABSTRACT: Species with broad ecological amplitudes with respect to a key focal resource, niche generalists, should maintain larger and more connected populations than niche specialists, leading to the prediction that nucleotide diversity will be lower and more subdivided in specialists relative to their generalist relatives. This logic describes the specialist-generalist variation hypothesis (SGVH). Some outbreeding species of Caenorhabditis nematodes use a variety of invertebrate dispersal vectors and have high molecular diversity. By contrast, Caenorhabditis japonica lives in a strict association and synchronized life cycle with its dispersal host, the shield bug Parastrachia japonensis, itself a diet specialist. Here, we characterize sequence variation for 20 nuclear loci to investigate how C. ja

SUBMITTER: Li S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3896024 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature