However, our sampling of taxa (populations) is robust and more taxa are unlikely to change the topology.
Density-dependent dispersal occurs throughout the animal kingdom, and has been shown to occur in some taxa whose populations exhibit multi-year population cycles.
This change in mating system has important consequences for many aspects of the biology of selfing taxa including population genetic structure, colonizing ability, genome evolution and the morphology of flowers [ 2- 5].
Using mtDNA, MHC, and microsatellite markers, we monitored these populations for two generations and predicted the change in ancestry from the two taxa using populations genetic theory and assortative mating estimates from Hurt et al. (2004) and fitness values from the reproductive experiments of Hurt and Hedrick (2003).
Its usefulness for the study of closely related taxa and populations within species lies in its very low rate of recombination, maternal inheritance, conserved structure, reduced effective population size and relatively high rates of evolution [ 6, 7, 9].
First, our sampling of known extant taxa and populations is relatively complete.
Many taxa comprise populations of different ploidy level.
The interpretation of biological taxa as populations is therefore not adequate for such cases.
The polymorphism is inherited in a broadly Mendelian fashion and in some species consists of dozens of discrete morphs that are convergent across taxa and populations.
In these taxa, host populations are most often polymorphic for infection, horizontal transmission occurs between distantly related hosts, and direct fitness effects on hosts are mild.
A generalist species may infect and develop successfully in hosts belonging to several taxa, while populations or strains are highly host-specific.
