Dan G Bock

Dan G Bock
Griffith University · School of Environment and Science

PhD

About

103
Publications
14,137
Reads
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3,357
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 2021 - August 2022
University of Guelph
Position
  • Research Associate
September 2019 - August 2021
Washington University in St. Louis
Position
  • PostDoc Position
September 2017 - August 2019
Harvard University
Position
  • PostDoc Position

Publications

Publications (103)
Article
Full-text available
Biological invasions represent an extraordinary opportunity to study evolution. This is because accidental or deliberate species introductions have taken place for centuries across large geographical scales, frequently prompting rapid evolutionary transitions in invasive populations. Until recently, however, the utility of invasions as evolutionary...
Article
Introductions of invasive species to new environments often result in rapid rates of trait evolution. While in some cases these evolutionary transitions are adaptive and driven by natural selection, they can also result from patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation associated with the invasion history. Here, we examined the brown anole (Anolis...
Preprint
Biological invasions represent an extraordinary opportunity to study evolution. This is because accidental or deliberate species introductions have taken place for centuries across large geographical scales, in natural and anthropogenic environments. Until recently however, the utility of invasions as evolutionary experiments has been hampered by t...
Preprint
Introductions of invasive species to new environments often result in rapid rates of trait evolution. While in some cases these evolutionary transitions are adaptive and driven by natural selection, they can also result from patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation associated with the invasion history. Here, we examined the brown anole (Anolis...
Article
Full-text available
Research conducted during the past two decades has demonstrated that biological invasions are excellent models of rapid evolution. Even so, characteristics of invasive populations such as a short time for recombination to assemble optimal combinations of alleles may occasionally limit adaptation to new environments. Here, we investigated such genet...
Article
Full-text available
The nuclear genomes of most animal species include NUMTs, segments of the mitogenome incorporated into their chromosomes. Although NUMT counts are known to vary greatly among species, there has been no comprehensive study of their frequency/attributes in the most diverse group of terrestrial organisms, insects. This study examines NUMTs derived fro...
Article
Full-text available
Studies of plants have been instrumental for revealing how new species originate. For several decades, botanical research has complemented and, in some cases, challenged concepts on speciation developed via the study of other organisms, while also revealing additional ways in which species can form. Now, the ability to sequence genomes at unprecede...
Article
Invasive species can impact native populations through competition, predation, habitat alteration, and disease transmission, but also genetically through hybridization. Potential outcomes of hybridization span the continuum from extinction to hybrid speciation and can be further complicated by anthropogenic habitat disturbance. Hybridization betwee...
Article
As anthropogenic activities are increasing the frequency and severity of droughts, understanding whether and how fast populations can adapt to sudden changes in their hydric environment is critically important. Here, we capitalize on the introduction of the Cuban brown anole lizard (Anolis sagrei) in North America to assess the contemporary evoluti...
Article
Full-text available
Rapid technological improvements are democratizing access to high quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies. No longer the domain of only the most highly studied model organisms, now non-traditional and emerging model species can be genome-enabled using a combination of sequencing technologies and assembly software. Consequently, old ideas built...
Preprint
The nuclear genomes of most animal species include segments of the mitogenome, but the count of these NUMTs varies greatly. This study examines the incidence of NUMTs derived from a 658 bp region of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene as a proxy for other coding regions of the mitochondrial genome. Analysis focuses on the most diverse group of te...
Preprint
Introductions of invasive species to new environments often result in rapid rates of trait evolution. While in some cases these evolutionary transitions are adaptive and driven by natural selection, they can also result from non-adaptive processes associated with the invasion history. Here, we examined the role of adaptive and non-adaptive evolutio...
Article
While adaptation is commonly thought to result from selection on DNA sequence‐based variation, recent studies have highlighted an analogous epigenetic component as well. However, the relative roles of these mechanisms in facilitating population persistence under environmental heterogeneity remain unclear. To address the underlying genetic and epige...
Preprint
Invasive species can impact native populations through competition, predation, and habitat alteration, but also genetically through hybridization. Potential outcomes of hybridization span the continuum from extinction to hybrid speciation and can be further complicated by anthropogenic habitat disturbance. Hybridization between the native green ano...
Article
Significance Hybridization is common in invasive species and can be important for their success. The connection between hybridization and bioinvasions could result in part because of a disruption in the selection pressures that limit hybridization in the native range. We demonstrate that, in the lizard Anolis sagrei , hybridization is rare in nativ...
Preprint
Full-text available
While adaptation is commonly thought to result from selection on DNA sequence-based variation, recent studies have highlighted an analogous epigenetic component as well. However, the extent to which these adaptive mechanisms to adaptation to environmental heterogeneity are redundant or complementary remains unclear. To address the underlying geneti...
Preprint
Full-text available
Rapid technological improvements are democratizing access to high quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies. No longer the domain of only the most highly studied model organisms, now non-traditional and emerging model species can be genome-enabled using a combination of sequencing technologies and assembly software. Consequently, old ideas built...
Chapter
Sunflowers are well-established model organisms in evolutionary biology; studies of them have made important contributions to our understanding of hybridization as an evolutionarily constructive process. Here, after introducing earlier foundational work, we review recent population genomics studies in this group. We discuss the origin of sunflowers...
Article
Full-text available
Resolving the origin of endangered taxa is an essential component of conservation. This information can be used to guide efforts of bolstering genetic diversity, and also enables species recovery and future evolutionary studies. Here, we used low-coverage whole genome sequencing to clarify the origin of Helianthus schweinitzii, an endangered tetrap...
Article
Full-text available
Flowering plants serve as a powerful model for studying the evolution of nuclear genome size (GS) given the tremendous GS variation that exists both within and across angiosperm lineages. Helianthus sunflowers consist of c. 50 species native to North America that occupy diverse habitats and vary in ploidy level. In the current study, we generated a...
Article
Full-text available
Perennial agriculture has been proposed as an option to improve the sustainability of cropping systems, by increasing the efficiency of resource use, while also providing ecosystem services. Neo-domestication, the contemporary domestication of plants that have not previously been used in agriculture, can be used to generate new crops for these syst...
Article
Full-text available
One of the most exciting recent developments in the field of invasion biology has been the growing realisation that evolution can determine invasive species' success. Here, we review research on contemporary evolution in invasive populations, with a focus on traits that have the potential to contribute to invasive spread. Evidence available so far...
Article
Full-text available
Invasion success of species introduced to novel environments may be facilitated by adaptive evolution and by phenotypic plasticity. Here we investigate the independent and joint contribution of both mechanisms as drivers of invasiveness in the perennial sunflower Helianthus tuberosus. We show that invasive genotypes have multiple origins, and that...
Article
Full-text available
The relationship between shipping and invasion success in marine waters has rarely been demonstrated empirically. In commercial ports, greater shipping activity is expected to increase invasion success at both the community and population levels by altering the diversity of exotic species discharged (colonization pressure) and the number of introdu...
Article
Premise: Wild sunflowers harbor considerable genetic diversity and are a major resource for improvement of the cultivated sunflower, Helianthus annuus. The Helianthus genus is also well known for its propensity for gene flow between taxa. Methods: We surveyed genomic diversity of 292 samples of wild Helianthus from 22 taxa that are cross-compati...
Chapter
Full-text available
Publication of The Genetics of Colonizing Species in 1965 launched the field of invasion genetics and highlighted the value of biological invasions as natural ecological and evolutionary experiments. Here, we review the past 50 years of invasion genetics to assess what we have learned and what we still don't know, focusing on the genetic changes as...
Chapter
Asteraceae, the largest family of flowering plants, has given rise to many notorious invasive species. Using publicly available transcriptome assemblies from 35 Asteraceae, including six major invasive species, we examined evidence for micro- and macro-evolutionary genomic changes associated with invasion. To detect episodes of positive selection r...
Data
Figure S1 Number and kinds of markers employed in the studies of hybridization and extinction included in our literature survey. The number of publications is also shown.
Data
Table S1 Description of case studies employed in literature survey.
Article
Full-text available
Hybridization may drive rare taxa to extinction through genetic swamping, where the rare form is replaced by hybrids, or by demographic swamping, where population growth rates are reduced due to the wasteful production of maladaptive hybrids. Conversely, hybridization may rescue the viability of small, inbred populations. Understanding the factors...
Article
During the past three decades, coastal marine waters have become among the most invaded habitats globally. Ascidians are among the most notorious invaders in these ecosystems. Owing to their rapid spread, frequent population outbreaks, and associated negative ecological and economic impacts, invasive ascidians have become a global problem. Thus, th...
Article
Full-text available
Data are the foundation of empirical research, yet all too often the datasets underlying published papers are unavailable, incorrect, or poorly curated. This is a serious issue, because future researchers are then unable to validate published results or reuse data to explore new ideas and hypotheses. Even if data files are securely stored and acces...
Preprint
Full-text available
Data are the foundation of empirical research, yet all too often the datasets underlying published papers are unavailable, incorrect, or poorly curated. This is a serious issue, because future researchers are then unable to validate published results or reuse data to explore new ideas and hypotheses. While data files may be securely stored and acce...
Preprint
Full-text available
Data are the foundation of empirical research, yet all too often the datasets underlying published papers are unavailable, incorrect, or poorly curated. This is a serious issue, because future researchers are then unable to validate published results or reuse data to explore new ideas and hypotheses. While data files may be securely stored and acce...
Article
Publication of The Genetics of Colonizing Species in 1965 launched the field of invasion genetics and highlighted the value of biological invasions as natural ecological and evolutionary experiments. Here we review the past 50 years of invasion genetics to assess what we have learned and what we still don't know, focusing on the genetic changes ass...
Article
Asteraceae, the largest family of flowering plants, has given rise to many notorious invasive species. Using publicly available transcriptome assemblies from 35 Asteraceae, including six major invasive species, we examined evidence for micro- and macro-evolutionary genomic changes associated with invasion. To detect episodes of positive selection r...
Article
Is DNA variation maintained in organelle genomes selectively neutral? The answer to this question has important implications for many aspects of ecology and evolution. While traditionally, the answer has been ‘yes’, recent studies in animals have shown that, on the contrary, mitochondrial DNA polymorphism is frequently adaptive. In plants, however,...
Article
Helianthus is an economically important and genetically diverse genus, containing both evolutionary model species and cultivated species. Genetic variation within this genus has been examined at many different scales, from genome size changes to chromosomal structure to nucleotide variation. The growing amount of genomic resources within the genus...
Article
Policies ensuring that research data are available on public archives are increasingly being implemented at the government [1], funding agency [2-4], and journal [5, 6] level. These policies are predicated on the idea that authors are poor stewards of their data, particularly over the long term [7], and indeed many studies have found that authors a...
Article
The perennial sunflower Helianthus tuberosus , known as Jerusalem Artichoke or Sunchoke, was cultivated in eastern North America before European contact. As such, it represents one of the few taxa that can support an independent origin of domestication in this region. Its tubers were adopted as a source of food and forage when the species was trans...
Article
Full-text available
Although studies of ancient lake fauna have provided important insights about speciation patterns and processes of organisms in heterogeneous benthic environments, evolutionary forces responsible for speciation in the relatively homogenous planktonic environment remain largely unexplored. In this study, we investigate possible mechanisms of speciat...
Data
Thirteen microsatellite loci for the threatened orange coral, Astroides calycularis have been designed. The polymorphism of these thirteen loci was tested in 24 polyps from different colonies. The results show that the allele numbers for each loci ranged from 2 to 14 (mean Na=5.1), with an average observed heterozygosity of 0.47 (He=0.45). These ne...
Article
Full-text available
The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archiving policy, recommending (but not requiring) archiving, and two versions of mandating data deposition...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Reproducibility is the benchmark for results and conclusions drawn from scientific studies, but systematic studies on the reproducibility of scientific results are surprisingly rare. Moreover, many modern statistical methods make use of 'random walk'model fitting procedures, and these are inherently stochastic in their output. Does the...
Article
Full-text available
The relative importance of multiple vectors to the initial establishment, spread and population dynamics of invasive species remains poorly understood. This study used molecular methods to clarify the roles of commercial shipping and recreational boating in the invasion by the cosmopolitan tunicate, Botryllus schlosseri. We evaluated (i) single vs....
Article
Anthropogenic activities frequently result in both rapidly changing environments and translocation of species from their native ranges (i.e., biological invasions). Empirical studies suggest that many factors associated with these changes can lead to complex genetic patterns, particularly among invasive populations. However, genetic complexities an...
Article
Whether speciation can advance to completion in the face of initially high levels of gene flow is a very controversial topic in evolutionary biology. Extensive gene exchange is generally considered to homogenize populations and counteract divergence. Moreover, the role of introgressive hybridization in evolution remains largely unexplored in animal...
Article
Full-text available
Elucidating the factors that shape species distributions has long been a fundamental goal in ecology and evolutionary biology. In spite of significant theoretical advancements, empirical studies of range limits have lagged behind. Specifically, little is known about how the attributes that allow species to expand their ranges and become widespread...