Elie Poulin

University of Chile · Departamento de Ciencias Ecológicas

Conceptual biogeographic frameworks have proposed that the relative contribution of environmental and geographical factors on microbial distribution depends on several characteristics of the habitat (e.g. environmental heterogeneity, species diversity, proportion of specialist/generalist taxa), all of them defining the degree of habitat specificity...

Rafting has been proposed as an effective mechanism for species without free-living pelagic larvae to achieve long-distance dispersal, theoretically preventing population differentiation over wide distributional ranges. Moreover, rafting has been advocated as a main dispersal mechanism for marine invertebrates with sub-Antarctic distributions, beca...

Introduction Understanding the relationships between taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity and endemism across environmental gradients is essential for elucidating the eco-evolutionary mechanisms that shape local plant communities. Methods A database was compiled from field surveys, national herbarium records, and virtual records of pe...

Abatus is a genus of irregular brooding sea urchins to the Southern Ocean. Among the 11 described species, three shared morphological traits and present an infaunal lifestyle in the infralittoral from the Subantarctic province; A. cavernosus in Patagonia, A. cordatus in Kerguelen, and A. agassizii in Tierra del Fuego and South Shetlands. The system...

The terrestrial fauna of Antarctica consists of a limited number of species, notably insects, small crustaceans and other micro-invertebrates. Over long periods of evolutionary isolation, these organisms have developed varying degrees of tolerance to multifaceted environmental stresses. Recent molecular biogeographical research highlights the endur...

The sea urchin Arbacia spatuligera is an echinoid distributed in the Southeastern Pacific Ocean from Peru to Chile. This species was previously reported from the subtidal zone with a bathymetric distribution up to 30m depth. In this work, 128 individuals were found in four mesophotic reefs along the central coast off Chile using closed-circuit rebr...

Connectivity is a fundamental process of population dynamics in marine ecosystems. In the last decade, with the emergence of new methods, combining different approaches to understand the patterns of connectivity among populations and their regulation has become increasingly feasible. The Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is characterized by complex...

Suspected cases of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1) were detected in Adelie penguins and Antarctic shags at the southernmost latitude so far in Antarctica, at two breeding sites out of 13 visited, using highly specific PCR assay. These first records mark the progression of the H5N1 panzootic into Antarctica.

Understanding the factors that sculpt fish gut microbiome is challenging, especially in natural populations characterized by high environmental and host genomic complexity. However, closely related hosts are valuable models for deciphering the contribution of host evolutionary history to microbiome assembly, through the underscoring of phylosymbios...

How the near-shore marine benthic communities survived Quaternary glaciations in Antarctica is a major question for Southern Ocean biogeographers. Several hypotheses that consider life-history traits, such as bathymetric ranges and developmental modes, have been proposed. Near-shore species with high dispersive potential are expected to show star-l...

The marine gastropod genus Laevilitorina is exclusive to the Southern Hemisphere, with 21 species from southern South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, and sub-Antarctic Islands. We present a comprehensive revision of Laevilitorina, using molecular and morphological analyses, to address formally the interspecific divergences within the n...

The echinoid genus Tetrapygus was initially described by l. Agassiz (1841) based on a single species, Tetrapygus niger Molina, 1782. Since the extensive work conducted by Mortensen (1935), Tetrapygus has received limited taxonomic attention over the past century. recent discoveries of new fossil species of Arbacia Gray, 1835 from the upper Pliocene...

The present dataset is a compilation of georeferenced occurrences of the littorinid genus Laevilacunaria Powell, 1951 (Mollusca, Gastropoda) in the Southern Ocean. Occurrence data were obtained from field expeditions (Antarctic and sub-Antarctic sampling) between 2015 and 2022, together with a review of published literature including records from 1...

Twentieth century industrial whaling pushed several species to the brink of extinction, with fin whales being the most impacted. However, a small, resident population in the Gulf of California was not targeted by whaling. Here, we analyzed 50 whole-genomes from the Eastern North Pacific (ENP) and Gulf of California (GOC) fin whale populations to in...

A new species of Arbacia (Echinoidea, Arbacioida), A. ballenensis sp. nov., from the Late Pliocene—Early Pleistocene of Baja California Norte, México, is described from a series of 62 specimens ranging in size from 6 to 20 mm test diameter. It differs from all extant species in the genus by its high number of interambulacral plates, numerous small...

Antarctica, its outlying archipelagoes and the Magellanic Subantarctic (MSA) ecoregion are amongst the last true wilderness areas remaining on the planet. Therefore, the publication, citation and peer review of their biodiversity data are essential. The new Millennium Institute Biodiversity of Antarctic and Subantarctic Ecosystems (BASE), a Chilean...

Anthropogenic environmental change is reducing available habitat for wild species, providing novel selection pressures such as infectious diseases and causing species to interact in new ways. The potential for emerging infectious diseases and zoonoses at the interface between humans, domestic animals, and wild species is a key global concern. In ve...

This database compiles occurrences of different taxa of marine and freshwater invertebrate species recorded from 2008 to 2023 in the Subantarctic regions, including the Magellanic region, the Cape Horn Reserve Biosphere, the sub-Antarctic islands of South Georgia and Kerguelen, the west and east coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula, the South Shetland...

Quaternary glaciations severely altered landscape/seascape at high latitudes and had major consequences on species geographical ranges, population sizes, genetic differentiation and speciation rates. The Magellan province in southern South America, constitutes an interesting area to evaluate the effect of glaciations over near-shore marine benthic...

Cetacean strandings are regularly recorded along the coast of Chile. However, crucial information such as species and sex of the individuals involved in these events can often be difficult to assess. In this context, the use of molecular tools as a complementary method can improve a stranding database, particularly by correcting misidentifications...

Abstract. Recent fieldwork on Neogene deposits of northern Chile led to the discovery of new material, including three new species of the echinoid genus Arbacia: Arbacia quyllur sp. nov. from the Miocene, Arbacia terraeignotae sp. nov., and Arbacia larraini sp. nov. from the Pliocene. In the Pleistocene, the new material includes the first fossil o...

Understanding the factors that sculpt fish gut microbiome is challenging, especially in natural populations characterized by high environmental and host genomic complexity. Yet, closely related hosts are valuable models for deciphering the contribution of host evolutionary history to microbiome assembly, through the underscoring of phylosymbiosis a...

Oceanic islands lacking connections to other land are extremely isolated from sources of potential colonists and have acquired their biota mainly through dispersal from geographically distant areas. Hence, isolated island biota constitutes interesting models to infer bio-geographical mechanisms of dispersal, colonization, differentiation, and speci...

Two main hypotheses have been proposed to explain the contemporary distribution of Antarctic terrestrial biota. We assess whether the current distribution of maritime Antarctic populations of the freshwater copepod Boeckella poppei is the result of (1) a post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) colonization, or whether (2) the species survived in regional g...

Littorinid snails are present in most coastal areas globally, playing a significant role in the ecology of intertidal communities. Laevilitorina is a marine gastropod genus distributed exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere, with 21 species reported from South America, the sub-Antarctic islands, Antarctica, New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania. Here...

Ectinogonia is a genus of jewel beetles from the western slope of the Andes Cordillera, inhabiting arid and semiarid ecosystems in different biogeographical provinces. Most of the species in this genus have undergone several rearrangements and misassignments over time, making the taxonomic history of Ectinogonia particularly complex. Recent studies...

Ectinogonia is a genus of jewel beetles from the western slope of the Andes Cordillera, inhabiting arid and semiarid ecosystems in different biogeographical provinces. Most of the species in this genus have undergone several rearrangements and misassignments over time, making the taxonomic history of Ectinogonia particularly complex. Recent studies...

We describe a new taxon of terrestrial bird of the genus Aphrastura (rayaditos) inhabiting the Diego Ramírez Archipelago, the southernmost point of the American continent. This archipelago is geographically isolated and lacks terrestrial mammalian predators as well as woody plants, providing a contrasted habitat to the forests inhabited by the othe...

Mealybugs (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha: Pseudococcidae) constitute important agricultural pests that often require control measures. Different mealybug taxa might, however, react differently to natural enemies and pesticides so that appropriate control measures against mealybugs rely heavily on the correct species identification. The mealybug Planococcu...

Aim The Antarctic Circumpolar Current imparts significant structure to the Southern Ocean biota. The Antarctic Polar Front is a major barrier to dispersal, with separate species (or sometimes intraspecific clades) normally occurring either side of this feature. We examined the biogeographic structure of an apparent exception to this rule in a wides...

Animal cooperation occurs in both genetically related and unrelated groups of individuals, involving costs and benefits that have not been fully elucidated. For example, risky behaviour such as mobbing a predator would be selected if participants are genetic relatives because they share a fraction of their gene pool (i.e., kin selection or indirect...

The degu (Octodon degus) is a diurnal long-lived rodent that can spontaneously develop molecular and behavioral changes that mirror those seen in human aging. With age some degu, but not all individuals, develop cognitive decline and brain pathology like that observed in Alzheimer's disease including neuroinflammation, hyperphosphorylated tau and a...

Galaxias species are interesting biogeographic models due to their distribution and different types of life cycles, with migratory and landlocked populations. To obtain a better understanding of the genetic consequences of the Quaternary glacial cycles in Galaxias maculatus, in this work we compared landlocked and migratory populations collected in...

Molecular-based analysis has become a fundamental tool to understand the role of Quaternary glacial episodes. In the Magellan Province in southern South America, ice covering during the last glacial maximum (20 ka) radically altered the landscape/seascape, speciation rates and distribution of species. For the notothenioid fishes of the genus Harpag...

Although mitochondrial DNA has been widely used in phylogeography, evidence has emerged that factors such as climate, food availability, and environmental pressures that produce high levels of stress can exert a strong influence on mitochondrial genomes, to the point of promoting the persistence of certain genotypes in order to compensate for the m...

Commerson’s dolphins (Cephalorhynchus commersonii) are separated into the subspecies C. c. commersonii, found along southern South America (SA) and the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas (FI/IM), and C. c. kerguelenensis, restricted to the subantarctic Kerguelen Islands (KI). Following the dispersal model proposed for the genus, the latter is thought...

Latitudinal diversity gradients (LDG) and their explanatory factors are among the most challenging topics in macroecology and biogeography. Despite of its apparent generality, a growing body of evidence shows that ‘anomalous’ LDG (i.e., inverse or hump-shaped trends) are common among marine organisms along the Southeastern Pacific (SEP) coast. Here...

Aim Delimiting recently diverged species is challenging. During speciation, genetic differentiation may be distributed unevenly across the genome, as different genomic regions can be subject to different selective pressures and evolutionary histories. Reliance on limited numbers of genetic markers that may be underpowered can make species delimitat...

• The sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) presents a disjointed geographic distribution. Significant genetic divergence between sei whales from the North Atlantic (NA) and North Pacific (NP) have been recorded; however, limited samples from the Southern Hemisphere (SH) have precluded a global analysis. • The largest recorded mass mortality event occu...

Aim We investigated evolutionary relationships and biogeographical patterns within the genus Boeckella to evaluate (1) whether its current widespread distribution in the Southern Hemisphere is due to recent long-distance dispersal or long-term diversification; and (2) the age and origin of sub-Antarctic and Antarctic Boeckella species, with particu...

Conceived as a baseline for the management and conservation of the marine protected area of the French Southern Territories (réserve naturelle nationale des Terres australes françaises), the checklist of marine macroalgae of the Kerguelen Islands was updated based on an extensive review of the literature and scientific databases, from the first rep...

Most of the microbial biogeographic patterns in the oceans have been depicted at the whole community level, leaving out finer taxonomic resolution (i.e., microdiversity) that is crucial to conduct intra-population phylogeographic study, as commonly done for macroorganisms. Here, we present a new approach to unravel the bacterial phylogeographic pat...

Four fin whale sub-species are currently considered valid: Balaenoptera physalus physalus in the North Atlantic, B. p. velifera in the North Pacific, B. p. quoyi and B. p. patachonica in the Southern Hemisphere. The last, not genetically validated, was described as a pygmy-type sub-species, found in low to mid latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere....

The potential for biological colonisation of Antarctic shores is an increasingly important topic in the context of anthropogenic warming. Successful Antarctic invasions until now have been recorded exclusively from terrestrial habitats. While non‐native marine species such as crabs, mussels and tunicates have already been reported from Antarctic co...

Irregular urchins exclusively live in marine soft bottom habitats, dwelling either upon or inside sediments and selectively picking up sediment grains and organic particles, or swallowing bulk sediment to feed on the associated organic matter. The exact food source and dietary requirements of most irregular echinoids, however, remain incompletely u...

Two species of scallop, Austrochlamys natans (“ Ostión del Sur ”) and Zygochlamys patagonica (“ Ostión patagonico ”) are presently exploited in the southern part of the Magallanes Province (MP). The lack of clarity in taxonomic identification and ecological aspects is generating both erroneous extraction statistics and an unperceived harvesting pre...

Members of the trochoidean genus Margarella (Calliostomatidae) are broadly distributed across Antarctic and sub-Antarctic ecosystems. Here we used novel mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences to clarify species boundaries and phylogenetic relationships among seven nominal species distributed on either side of the Antarctic Polar Front (APF). Mole...

Human transformation of natural habitats facilitates pathogen transmission between domestic and wild species. The guigna (Leopardus guigna), a small felid found in Chile, has experienced habitat loss and an increased probability of contact with domestic cats. Here we describe the interspecific transmission of feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and feline...

Phylogeography traditionally correlates the genetic relationships among individuals within a macroorganism species, to their spatial distribution. Most microbial phylogeographic studies so far have been restricted to narrow geographical regions, mainly focusing on isolated strains, either obtained by culture or single-strain natural enrichments. Ho...

Las reservas de la biosfera tienen entre sus funciones apoyar la investigación científica, educación, capacitación y monitoreo. En la Reserva de la Biosfera Cabo de Hornos (RBCH), creada el año 2005, estas funciones se han cumplido desde la conformación del Parque Etnobotánico Omora el año 2000 y con su implementación, el año 2008, como sitio co-fu...

This data is in the framework of the following entitled paper: "Unveiling the unknown phylogenetic position of the scallop Austrochlamys natans and its implications for marine stewardship in the Magallanes Province"

Landscape anthropization has been identified as one of the main drivers of pathogen emergence worldwide, facilitating pathogen spillover between domestic species and wildlife. The present study investigated Carnivore protoparvovirus‐1 infection using molecular methods in 98 free‐ranging wild guignas (Leopardus guigna) and 262 co‐occurring owned, fr...

El cambio climático global afecta a todas las regiones del planeta, pero hay zonas geográficas que son especialmente vulnerables en el corto plazo. Entre estas regiones, Magallanes sobresale, especialmente la ecorregión subantártica de Magallanes (47° S-56° S) 1. Esta ecorregión presenta singularidades ecosistémicas y ecológicas tales como sus gran...

Penguins are the only extant family of flightless diving birds. They currently comprise at least 18 species, distributed from polar to tropical environments in the Southern Hemisphere. The history of their diversification and adaptation to these diverse environments remains controversial. We used 22 new genomes from 18 penguin species to reconstruc...

First report of genetic diversity and demographic history of the sea cucumber Athyonidium chilensis (Semper, 1868) from Chile. Sea cucumbers inhabit all depths and oceans of the world. In Chile, within this group stands out Athyonidium chilensis (Semper, 1868), a commercial species distributed throughout the Southeastern Pacific, which recently has...

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