Applications of molecular genetics and computer software to problems in conservation and evolutionary biology

Multiple powerful new tools have emerged from the field of molecular biology that permit evolutionary biologists to obtain genetic information from a wide variety of taxa and to address a host of different questions. This document contains two papers that demonstrate the usefulness of molecular tools in the fields of conservation biology and theoretical population genetics. One manuscript from this dissertation involves the use of molecular genetic techniques to characterize levels of genetic differentiation and relationships of populations of endangered ambersnails in the southwestern United States. A second manuscript in this document describes work on the population genetics of four aquatic insect species in the Arizona White Mountains. This project addressed the importance of a fundamental microevolutionary process, gene flow, in determining the extent of genetic differentiation of populations. Because the technology used to generate genetic data has changed dramatically in recent years, new quantitative techniques have emerged in parallel to assist with the interpretation of new types of genetic information. New statistical procedures, however, are generally useless to the average researcher until they are incorporated into efficient, approachable, and well-documented computer programs. Also included in this document are two chapters dealing with my work in the field of software development. One manuscript describes a sophisticated Windows-based computer program for the analysis of population genetic data. This program, called “Tools for Population Genetic Analyses (TFPGA)” is currently used world-wide by scientists seeking a simple, flexible framework from which multiple types of inferences about genetic data can be made. The second manuscript describes a simple variation of a Mantel matrix correlation analysis procedure that can easily be applied to genetic data to make inferences about levels of genetic differentiation of populations. It also includes information about a Windows program that was written to perform this analysis.