Daniel J MacGuigan

• Ph.D.
• Research Biologist at NOAA Fisheries/Smithsonian NMNH

Delimiting young species is one of the great challenges of systematic biology, particularly when the species in question exhibit little morphological divergence. Anolis distichus, a trunk anole with more than a dozen subspecies that are defined primarily by dewlap color, may actually represent several independent evolutionary lineages. To test this...

Evolutionary history is typically portrayed as a branching phylogenetic tree, yet not all evolution proceeds in a purely bifurcating manner. Introgressive hybridization is one process that results in reticulate evolution. Most known examples of genome-wide introgression occur among closely related species with relatively recent common ancestry; how...

Fishes of the family Catostomidae (“suckers”; Teleostei: Cypriniformes) are hypothesized to have undergone an allopolyploidy event approximately 60 million years ago. However, genomic evidence has previously been unavailable to assess this hypothesis. We sequenced and assembled the first chromosome-level catostomid genome, Chinese sucker (Myxocypri...

Adaptive radiation illustrates links between ecological opportunity, natural selection and the generation of biodiversity. Central to adaptive radiation is the association between a diversifying lineage and the evolution of phenotypic variation that facilitates the use of new environments or resources. However, is not clear whether adaptive evoluti...

The evolutionary histories of adaptive radiations can be marked by dramatic demographic fluctuations. However, the demographic histories of ecologically-linked co-diversifying lineages remain understudied. The Laurentian Great Lakes provide a unique system of two such radiations that are dispersed across depth gradients with a predator-prey relatio...

Evolutionary stasis characterizes lineages that seldom speciate and show little phenotypic change over long stretches of geological time. Although lineages that appear to exhibit evolutionary stasis are often called living fossils, no single mechanism is thought responsible for their slow rates of morphological evolution and low species diversity....

Evolutionary stasis characterizes lineages that seldom speciate and show little phenotypic change over long stretches of geological time. Although lineages that appear to exhibit evolutionary stasis are often called living fossils, no single mechanism is thought to be responsible for their slow rates of morphological evolution and low species diver...

Natural range expansions in warm-water freshwater fishes are currently not well understood, but shifts in native species distributions can be influenced by many factors, including habitat restoration or degradation and climate change. Here, we provide empirical evidence of range expansions observed in two native freshwater fish species in Lake Erie...

The evolutionary histories of adaptive radiations can be marked by dramatic demographic fluctuations. However, the demographic histories of ecologically-linked co-diversifying lineages remains understudied. The Laurentian Great Lakes provide a unique system of two lineages that are dispersed across depth gradients with a predator-prey relationship....

Geographic isolation is the primary driver of speciation in many vertebrate lineages. This trend is exemplified by North American darters, a clade of freshwater fishes where nearly all sister species pairs are allopatric and separated by millions of years of divergence. One of the only exceptions is the Lake Waccamaw endemic Etheostoma perlongum an...

The Stripetail Darter, Etheostoma kennicotti (Putnam), is widely distributed in tributaries of the lower Ohio River, the upper Green River system, the Clarks River system, throughout the Tennessee River system, the Laurel River system, and the upper Cumberland River system. Etheostoma cumberlandicum Jordan and Swain was described in 1883 from a pop...

Natural range expansions in warm-water freshwater fishes are currently not well understood, but shifts in native species distributions can be influenced by many factors, including habitat restoration or degradation and climate change. Here, we provide empirical evidence of range expansions observed in two native freshwater fish species in Lake Erie...

Geographic isolation is the primary driver of speciation in many vertebrate lineages. This trend is exemplified by North American darters, a clade of freshwater fishes where nearly all sister species pairs are allopatric and separated by millions of years of divergence. One of the only exceptions is the Lake Waccamaw endemic Etheostoma perlongum an...

Wide-ranging species often span geographic dispersal barriers, providing opportunity for divergence via genetic drift or natural selection. Such conditions can be favorable for speciation, and wide-ranging taxa are frequently subdivided into multiple species by modern molecular studies. However, with wide-ranging species, it is important to explici...

The history of riverine fish diversification is largely a product of geographic isolation. Physical barriers that reduce or eliminate gene flow between populations facilitate divergence via genetic drift and natural selection, eventually leading to speciation. For freshwater organisms, diversification is often the product of drainage basin rearrang...

Species delimitation is fundamental to deciphering the mechanisms that generate and maintain biodiversity. Alpha taxonomy historically relied on expert knowledge to describe new species using phenotypic and biogeographic evidence, which has the appearance of investigator subjectivity. In contrast, DNA-based methods using the multispecies coalescent...

The Neotropics harbor the most species-rich freshwater fish fauna on the planet, but the timing of that exceptional diversification remains unclear. Did the Neotropics accumulate species steadily throughout their long history, or attain their remarkable diversity recently? Biologists have long debated the relative support for these museum and cradl...

Percina freemanorum, the Etowah Bridled Darter, is described as a new species endemic to the Etowah River system in Georgia, specifically in Long Swamp Creek, Amicalola Creek, and the upper portion of the Etowah River. The earliest collection records for Percina freemanorum date to 1948 and in 2007 the species was delimited as populations of Percin...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Epischura (Calanoida: Temoridae) is a Holarctic group of copepods serving important ecological roles, but it is difficult to study because of small range sizes of individual species and widespread distribution of the genus. This genus includes Tertiary relicts, some endemic to single, isolated lakes and can play major roles in unique ecosystems lik...

Male dewlap size varies dramatically among and within anole species (Nicholson et al. 2007; Vanhooydonck et al. 2009). Within species, population-level differences in dewlap size have been documented and are thought to be driven by habitat differences (Ng et al. 2013a), predator absence/presence and variation in sexual size dimorphism (Vanhooydonck...

Adaptive radiation illustrates the links between ecological opportunity, natural selection, and the generation of biodiversity. Central to adaptive radiation is the association between a diversifying lineage and the evolution of key traits that facilitate the utilization of novel environments or resources. However, is not clear whether adaptive evo...

When entering a new community, introduced species leave behind members of their native community while simultaneously forming novel biotic interactions. Escape from enemies during the process of introduction has long been hypothesized to drive the increased performance of invasive species. However, recent studies and quantitative syntheses find tha...

We provide a description of the Blueface Darter, Etheostoma cyanoprosopum, which is distributed in the upper Sipsey Fork of the Mobile Basin and the upper portion of the Bear Creek system in the Tennessee River Drainage. The distinctiveness of Etheostoma cyanoprosopum is assessed through analysis of morphological variation and molecular phylogeneti...

We provide a description of the Blueface Darter, Etheostoma cyanoprosopum, which is distributed in the upper Sipsey Fork of the Mobile Basin and the upper portion of the Bear Creek system in the Tennessee River Drainage. The distinctiveness of Etheostoma cyanoprosopum is assessed through analysis of morphological variation and molecular phylogeneti...

As the cost of DNA sequencing decline, we are increasingly able to generate genomic data for non-model organism. Such large molecular datasets provide us with the ability to resolve not only contentious deep phylogenetic relationships, but also provide the detailed information necessary to investigate recently diverging clades. Using RAD sequencing...

Discovering and describing biodiversity is one of the primary goals of systematic biology. The Greenthroat Darter (Etheostoma lepdium) is distributed primarily in southern Texas, but with a disjunct population in southeastern New Mexico. The species exhibits variation in morphology and male nuptial coloration, which has been considered clinal in na...

The diversity of sexual signals is astounding, and divergence in these traits is believed to be associated with the early stages of speciation. An increasing number of studies also suggest a role for natural selection in driving signal divergence for effective transmission in heterogeneous environments. Both speciation and adaptive divergence, howe...