David Weese

Georgia College and State University · Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences

Archipelagos of the Indo-West Pacific are considered to be among the richest in the world in biodiversity, and phylogeographic studies generally support either the center of origin or the center of accumulation hypothesis to explain this pattern. To differentiate between these competing hypotheses for organisms from the Indo-West Pacific anchialine...

One of the most threatened ecosystems on many islands may be anchialine habitats, or coastal land-locked water bodies with no surface connection to the sea yet containing brackish water that fluctuates with the tides. To better manage these habitats, it is important to develop a broader understanding of the biodiversity within them since such knowl...

Increasingly, wildlife managers are turning to molecular genetics to aid in conservation efforts. While such approaches have been applied to large terrestrial and aquatic vertebrate species, their application to other traded organisms has not been extensively explored. Here, we examined the utility of these techniques for identifying source populat...

Glacial cycles of the Quaternary have heavily influenced the demographic history of various species. To test the evolutionary impact of palaeo-geologic and climatic events on the demographic history of marine taxa from the coastal Western Pacific, we investigated the population structure and demographic history of two economically important fish (T...

The climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene are believed to have greatly impacted the distribution and population dynamics of many terrestrial and marine taxa. Studies investigating the evolutionary effects of palaeo-climatic fluctuations in the East Asia Seas are scarce and the limited studies available suggest two competing evolutionary patterns...

Long, S.A.; Mango-Mutiti, C.; Mutiti, S., and Weese, D.A., 2023. Investigating the effects of increasing water salinity on an endemic crayfish. Journal of Coastal Research, 39(5), 816–822. Charlotte (North Carolina), ISSN 0749-0208. The greatest diversity of freshwater crayfish is found in the southeastern United States, home to nearly 75% of the w...

Ureolytic microbes are abundant in broiler litter (BL), and previous research indicates that microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation via urea hydrolysis occurs in gypsum‐amended litters. Given that calcium carbonate (CaCO 3 ) is used to correct soil acidity, we hypothesized that the soil‐liming potential of BL + gypsum is greater than t...

As a bio]diversity hotspot, the East Indies (Coral) Triangle possesses the highest biodiversity on the earth. However, evolutionary hypotheses around this area remain controversial; e.g., center of origin, center of accumulation, and center of overlap have been supported by different species. This study aims to answer the evolutionary influence of...

The history of tilapia in Hawaii began in the 1950s with the introduction of five species for recreational, research, and commercial purposes (Hida et al., 1962; Szyper et al., 2000). In 2000, the existing tilapia stocks were evaluated for their utility in establishing a tilapia producing industry (Szyper et al., 2000). The study showed that the st...

Microbiomes represent the collective bacteria, archaea, protist, fungi, and virus communities living in or on individual organisms that are typically multicellular eukaryotes. Such consortia have become recognized as having significant impacts on the development, health, and disease status of their hosts. Since understanding the mechanistic connect...

Species interactions are fundamental ecological forces that can have significant impacts on the evolutionary trajectories of species. Nonetheless, the contribution of predator-prey interactions to genetic and phenotypic divergence remains largely unknown. Predatory marine snails of the family Conidae exhibit specializations for different prey items...

The anchialine ecosystem, defined as tidally influenced, nearshore bodies of water with subterranean freshwater and seawater connections, has been relatively unstudied regarding its microbial communities. Notably, anchialine habitats of the Hawaiian Archipelago, specifically the Cape Kinau (Maui) and Kona (Hawaii) regions, can possess distinctive,...

Little is currently known regarding microbial community structure, and the environmental factors influencing it, within the anchialine ecosystem, defined as near-shore, land-locked water bodies with subsurface connections to the ocean and groundwater aquifer. The Hawaiian Archipelago is home to numerous anchialine habitats, with some on the islands...

Phylogenomic studies have improved understanding of deep metazoan phylogeny and show promise for resolving incongruences among analyses based on limited numbers of loci. One region of the animal tree that has been especially difficult to resolve, even with phylogenomic approaches, is relationships within Lophotrochozoa (the animal clade that includ...

Little is known about the larval ecology of organisms from the anchialine ecosystem, tidally influenced landlocked bodies of mixohaline water possessing simultaneous subterranean connections to the ocean and groundwater aquifer. Larval stages have not been observed in the epigeal (surface) portion of such environments, implying reproduction and dev...

Little is known about the larval ecology of organisms from the anchialine ecosystem, tidally influenced land-locked bodies of mixohaline water possessing simultaneous subterranean connections to the ocean and groundwater aquifer. Larval stages have not been observed in the epigeal (surface) portion of such environments, implying reproduction and de...

Larvae in aquatic habitats often develop in environments different from those they inhabit as adults. Shrimp in the Atyidae exemplify this trend, as larvae of many species require salt or brackish water for development, while adults are freshwater-adapted. An exception within the Atyidae family is the “anchialine clade,” which are euryhaline as adu...

The Atyidae are caridean shrimp possessing hair-like setae on their claws and are important contributors to ecological services in tropical and temperate fresh and brackish water ecosystems. Complete mitochondrial genomes have only been reported from five of the 449 species in the family, thus limiting understanding of mitochondrial genome evolutio...

Cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymatically converts arachidonic acid into prostaglandin G/H in animals and has importance during pregnancy, digestion, and other physiological functions in mammals. COX genes have mainly been described from vertebrates, where gene duplications are common, but few studies have examined COX in invertebrates. Given the increasi...

Ambulacraria, comprising Hemichordata and Echinodermata [1], is closely related to Chordata, making it integral to understanding chordate origins and polarizing chordate molecular and morphological characters [2-4]. Unfortunately, relationships within Hemichordata and Echinodermata have remained unresolved [1, 5-10], compromising our ability to ext...

This article documents the public availability of (i) transcriptome sequence data, assembly and annotation, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for the cone snail Conus miliaris; (ii) a set of SNP markers for two biotypes from the Culex pipiens mosquito complex; (iii) transcriptome sequence data, assembly and annotation for the mountain fly...