Jeremy S Herman

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Curator, Vertebrates at National Museums Scotland

Background/Objectives: The colonization history of house mice reflects the maritime history of humans that passively transported them worldwide. We investigated western house mouse colonization in the Atlantic region through studies of mitochondrial D-loop DNA sequences from modern specimens. Methods: We assembled a dataset of 758 haplotypes derive...

Archaeological material adds a temporal dimension to evolutionary studies that is valuable for elucidating long-term population stability and evolutionary shifts for species closely associated with humans. Here, a two-dimensional geometric morphometrics approach on first upper molars was applied to modern and archaeological samples to assess the ev...

Mitochondrial genetic variation was examined in long-eared hedgehogs, Hemiechinus auritus, from the Anatolian Peninsula, the adjacent island of Cyprus and from Azerbaijan. These data were compared with those available from other parts of the species’ range in North Africa and Asia. Two distinct cytochrome-b lineages are present in Anatolia, one of...

Albinism is a hypopigmentation disorder which occurs as a consequence of mutations in genes involved in melanin biosynthesis. It is recorded in many mammalian species but is generally considered to be rare in natural populations. Here, we describe a fully albino individual of the common shrew Sorex araneus found in south-western Poland. We also pre...

Micromammals, like rodents and shrews, adapt rapidly to take advantage of new food sources, habitats and ecological niches, frequently thriving in anthropogenic environments. Their remains, often retrieved during archaeological investigations, can be a valuable source of information about the past environmental conditions as well as interspecies in...

Beaked whales, Family Ziphiidae, occur in deep offshore and oceanic seas, where they are very difficult to study, so that much of our knowledge about them is derived from stranded animals. Most beaked whales (e.g., genera Mesoplodon and Ziphius) have only one pair of mandibular teeth. A reduced dentition is widely regarded as an adaptation to sucti...

The vertebrate photoperiodic neuroendocrine system uses the photoperiod as a proxy to time the annual rhythms in reproduction. The thyrotropin receptor (TSHR) is a key protein in the mammalian seasonal reproduction pathway. Its abundance and function can tune sensitivity to the photoperiod. To investigate seasonal adaptation in mammals, the hinge r...

The vertebrate photoperiodic neuroendocrine system uses photoperiod as a proxy to time annual rhythms in reproduction. To investigate seasonal adaptation in mammals, the hinge region and the first part of the transmembrane domain of the Tshr gene were sequenced for 278 common vole ( Microtus arvalis ) specimens from 15 localities in Western Europe,...

Oxyurid nematodes (Syphacia spp.) from bank (Myodes glareolus) and field/common (Microtus spp.) voles, from disparate geographical sites in the British Isles, were examined morphologically and genetically. The genetic signatures of 118 new isolates are provided, based primarily on the rDNA internal transcribed spacers (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2) region and fo...

Coprolites (fossilized faeces) can provide valuable insights into species' diet and related habits. In archaeozoological contexts, they are a potential source of information on human-animal interactions as well as human and animal subsistence. However, despite a broad discussion on coprolites in archaeology, such finds are rarely subject to detaile...

A female beaked whale, Family Ziphiidae, was reported as stranded on 29th January 2020 at Kearvaig Bay, Sutherland, Scotland. Examination of its skull confirms that this is the first recorded stranding of True’s beaked whale, Mesoplodon mirus, in Britain.

Following human occupation, the house mouse has colonised numerous islands, exposing the species to a wide variety of environments. Such a colonisation process, involving successive founder events and bottlenecks, may either promote random evolution or facilitate adaptation, making the relative importance of adaptive and stochastic processes in ins...

Abstract Understanding the factors that contribute to the generation of reproductively isolated forms is a fundamental goal of evolutionary biology. Cryptic species are an especially interesting challenge to study in this context since they lack obvious morphological differentiation that provides clues to adaptive divergence that may drive reproduc...

Bats form the second most diverse mammalian order (Chiroptera) and vary widely in their physiology and ecology. Those species which live in temperate climates are generally insectivorous and nocturnal or crepuscular, sheltering in tree hollows, caves or buildings during the day. They are potentially valuable ecological indicators, due to their depe...

The Eurasian field vole (Microtus agrestis) comprises three evolutionarily significant units (ESUs). The northern ESU is found at higher latitudes across the western Palaearctic region and includes six, largely allopatric, mitochondrial DNA lineages that were derived from population bottlenecks. One of these lineages is found in southern Britain an...

Aim The distribution of the western house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) around the world has been strongly influenced by the movement of humans. The close association between the house mouse and human phylogeography has been primarily studied in the peripheral distribution of the species. Here, we inferred the complex colonization history of Cypr...

Insular wildlife populations provide opportunities to examine biological questions in systems that are relatively closed and potentially tractable, striking examples being the long-term studies of ecology and evolution in the red deer and feral sheep populations on the Hebridean islands of Rum and St Kilda. In the case of parasitology, Understandin...

Phenotypic variation was characterized in 187 modern and archaeological specimens of the lesser white-toothed shrew (Crocidura suaveolens), obtained from both insular and continental European locations. Geometric morphometric methods were used to quantify variation in size and shape of the mandible. The phenotypic distance between populations, and...

Microfaunal remains are commonly used as palaeoenvironmental proxies and have been proposed as a means to identify relative ages of Late Quaternary deposits through biostratigraphy (i.e., utilising ‘Mammal Assemblage Zones’). However, assemblages of faunal remains can include a diverse range of taxa which are often difficult to distinguish using mo...

The wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus is an opportunistic rodent that is found throughout most of the European mainland. It is present on many islands around the margins of the continent and in northern Africa. The species has been the subject of previous phylogeographical studies, although these have focussed on the more southerly part of its range....

The common vole (Microtus arvalis) has been a model species of small mammal for studying end-glacial colonization history. In the present study we expanded the sampling from central and eastern Europe, analyzing contemporary genetic structure to identify the role of a potential 'northern glacial refugium', i.e. a refugium at a higher latitude than...

Genetic structure in common voles from central Europe. Genetic structure of Microtus arvalis populations in central Europe, based on a Bayesian analysis of microsatellite data with K = 2. The pattern is consistent with the presence of western and eastern groups (as previously observed in [34]). Dots show point locations depicted according to the po...

Bayesian genealogy of the common vole from Europe. Maximum clade credibility tree for 786 cytochrome b sequences of Microtus arvalis, summarized and annotated from 7200 trees re-sampled from 720 million post-burnin generations of Bayesian genealogy sampling. For genealogy calibration the substitution rate of 3.27 x 10−7 substitutions/site/year was...

The evaluation of the STRUCTURE results for the common vole from central Europe. The Evanno et al. [61] ΔK (continuous line, left Y axis) and the mean log probability Ln(K) (open points, right Y axis) results from STRUCTURE for Microtus arvalis from central Europe based on the microsatellite data. (TIF)

The sPCA plots for the common vole from central Europe. Two representations of scores obtained for each population using Spatial Principal Components Analysis (sPCA), with a grid indicating the geographical relationship of the populations. The black and white squares (or grey level variant) represent positive and negative values respectively. Only...

The results of the sPCA for the common vole from central Europe. Spatial Principal Component Analysis (sPCA) based on microsatellites of the common vole from central Europe. (A) Positive and negative eigenvalues which reflect potential global and local structure respectively. Only the first principal component is of sufficient magnitude to be retai...

List of specimens of Microtus arvalis for which new cytochrome b sequences were obtained for this study, including their site of origin (country codes: PL–Poland, BY–Belarus, RU–Russia, MDV–Moldova, UKR–Ukraine, RO–Romania, SLO–Slovenia, CR–Croatia, CZ–Czech Republic, HU–Hungary, SB–Serbia). (DOCX)

Distribution of nucleotide polymorphisms with data organized by individual nucleotides (upper panel) and triplets (lower panel) in the Microtus arvalis cytochrome b sequences from newly-collected samples from central Europe. (DOCX)

Estimates of multilocus FST between all population pairs of Microtus arvalis based on microsatellites. Population labels are given according to S3 Table. Significant values are given after Bonferroni correction and marked by ‘*’. (DOCX)

Bayesian skyline plot for the Eastern mtDNA lineage of the common vole. Bayesian skyline plot presenting demographic change in the Eastern mtDNA lineage of the common vole with the effective female population size on a log scale against time from the present to 17.5 kya. (TIF)

The microsatellite data obtained in this study for 8 loci of the common vole. The missing data are marked by ‘-9’. (XLSX)

Characteristics of loci used in the microsatellite analysis of the whole Microtus arvalis dataset including observed (HO) and expected (HE) heterozygosity and null alleles. (DOCX)

List of those collection localities from central and eastern Europe mapped in Fig 1B which provided previously published data for this study but which were not used to generate new cytb or microsatellite data. The full list of previously published cytb sequences that were used in this study are available in S1, S2 and S4 Tables in [30]. The numbers...

Diversity indices for samples of Microtus arvalis used in this study for microsatellite analysis including sampling locality with geographic coordinates, sample size (n), observed (HO) and expected (HE) heterozygosity, allelic richness (AR) and the inbreeding coefficient (FIS). Samples used in the previous study of Stojak et al. [34] are marked by...

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Table S2. Measurements of skeletal elements. Table S3. Relative frequencies of skeletal elements. Table S4. Fragmentation of remains

A selective sweep is the result of strong positive selection driving newly occurring or standing genetic variants to fixation, and can dramatically alter the pattern and distribution of allelic diversity in a population. Population-level sequencing data have enabled discoveries of selective sweeps associated with genes involved in recent adaptation...

A selective sweep is the result of strong positive selection rapidly driving newly occurring or standing genetic variants to fixation, and can dramatically alter the pattern and distribution of allelic diversity in a population or species. Population-level sequencing data have enabled discoveries of selective sweeps associated with genes involved i...

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

There is now considerable evidence for the survival of temperate species within glacial refugia that were situated at relatively high latitudes, notably the Carpathian Basin and Dordogne region in Europe. However, the prevalence of fossil remains in such locations is rarely matched by molecular evidence for their contribution to subsequent geograph...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common degenerative disease of synovial joints with the potential to cause pathology and welfare issues in both domestic and wild ruminants. Previous work has identified OA of the elbow joint in domestic sheep, but the prevalence of OA of the jaw and in particular the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) has not been previously re...

Phylogeography interprets molecular genetic variation in a spatial and temporal context. Molecular clocks are frequently used to calibrate phylogeographic analyses, however there is mounting evidence that molecular rates decay over the relevant timescales. It is therefore essential that an appropriate rate is determined, consistent with the tempora...

There is mounting evidence that rates of molecular evolution decay over recent timescales. Care is needed, therefore, to apply appropriate rates whenever molecular variation is analysed within a temporal context. Given their focus on recent events, intraspecific phylogeographic and demographic studies are particularly vulnerable to erroneous applic...

Throughout human history, coastal and marine resources have been a vital part of human subsistence. As a result archaeological faunal assemblages from coastal sites often contain large quantities of skeletal remains indicative of human interaction with marine mammals. However, these are often hard to identify due to a unique combination of factors...

Species are generally described from morphological features, but there is growing recognition of sister forms that show substantial genetic differentiation without obvious morphological variation and may therefore be considered 'cryptic species'. Here, we investigate the field vole (Microtus agrestis), a Eurasian mammal with little apparent morphol...

Overarching trends can be seen in European mammalian phylogeography, yet it is clear that species responded differently depending on adaptations to past environments. We built upon previous work on the phylogeography of weasels (Mustela nivalis) in Europe by using well-preserved museum specimens from a proposed phylogeo-graphic suture zone. The com...

There is great uncertainty about how Ireland attained its current fauna and flora. Long-distance human-mediated colonization from southwestern Europe has been seen as a possible way that Ireland obtained many of its species; however, Britain has (surprisingly) been neglected as a source area for Ireland. The pygmy shrew has long been considered an...

Genetic markers are often used to examine population history. There is considerable debate about the behaviour of molecular clock rates around the population-species transition. Nevertheless, appropriate calibration is critical to any inference regarding the absolute timing and scale of demographic changes. Here, we use a mitochondrial cytochrome b...

Recent genetic studies have challenged the traditional view that the ancestors of British Celtic people spread from central Europe during the Iron Age and have suggested a much earlier origin for them as part of the human recolonization of Britain at the end of the last glaciation. Here we propose that small mammals provide an analogue to help reso...

In the first week of January 1931 a beaked whale (Family Ziphiidae) stranded at Gierinish, South Uist, Outer Hebrides, was identified as a True's beaked whale Mesoplodon mirus. This stranding is referred to frequently in the cetacean literature, either directly or indirectly. Re-examination of the skull of this specimen reveals characters unique to...

The west European subspecies of house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) has gained much of its current widespread distribution through commensalism with humans. This means that the phylogeography of M. m. domesticus should reflect patterns of human movements. We studied restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and DNA sequence variations in mo...

Skulls of odontocetes (toothed whales, including dolphins and porpoises) are typified by directional asymmetry, particularly in elements associated with the airway. Generally, it is assumed this asymmetry is related to biosonar production. However, skull asymmetry may actually be a by-product of selection pressure for an asymmetrically positioned l...

A number of dolphin species, though highly mobile, show genetic structure among parapatric and sometimes sympatric populations. However, little is known about the temporal patterns of population structure for these species. Here, we apply Bayesian inference and data from ancient DNA to assess the structure and dynamics of bottlenose dolphin (Tursio...

The common dolphin has a widespread distribution and is relatively abundant in the temperate to subtropical waters of the eastern North Atlantic. However, it is not known whether different species, subspecies, or populations occur in this region. We examined 393 common dolphin skulls obtained from both stranded and bycaught individuals collected be...

1. Climate change is thought to affect the composition and structure of local ecological communities. We investigate whether ocean warming around north-west Scotland since 1981 has been associated with changes in the local cetacean community.2. Analysis of strandings from 1948 to 2003 found that no new species per decade were recorded in north-west...

This study examined the development of the tusks and associated skeletal structures in a series of 18 specimens of Sowerby's beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens) from Scotland. The relative position of the tusks along the length of the mandible was found to move from 23% of mandible length from the anterior extremity in the smallest animal to around 37...

Published information on the diet of Cuvier's beaked whales Ziphius cavirostris (Odontoceti: Ziphiidae) is reviewed and new information on the stomach contents of three animals: two stranded in Galicia (north-west Spain) in February 1990 at A Lanzada, and in February 1995 at Portonovo; and the third stranded in February 1999 in North Uist (Scotland...

This paper presents information on the stomach contents of four northern bottlenose whales Hyperoodon ampullatus (Odontoceti: Ziphiidae) from the north-east Atlantic, an area for which there are few recent data on the feeding ecology of this species. Two of these whales were relatively recent strandings, a female stranded in August 1993 at Hargen (...