Patricia Sourrouille

• Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive, French National Centre for Scientific Research

With five currently recognized species that form several secondary contact zones, slow worms (Anguidae: Anguis) offer a valuable model to study the fate of evolutionary lineages in the face of hybridization and genetic introgression. The relationships between the Western Slow Worm Anguis fragilis and the Italian Slow Worm Anguis veronensis are part...

Western European Water Frog species can be morphologically very similar, especially Pelophylax ridibun­dus and P. perezi. As these species, together with P. lessonae, produce hybridogenetic lineages with highly variable phenotypes, the morphological identification of taxa in this genus remains challenging. This is especially problematic in the curr...

The description of Vipera walser from the Northern Italian Alps as a new species (Ghielmi et al., 2016, Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, 54, 161) was one of the most unexpected surprises of European herpetology in the 21st century. In mitochondrial (mt) DNA, it is closely related to a group of vipers only present in the...

Reproductive isolation of avian species often extensively relies on mate choice. Several bird species have recently been shown to use chemical cues in mate choice, in addition to the well-studied visual and acoustic signals. The two former European subspecies of Cory’s shearwater have been recently afforded species status as Calonectris borealis an...

We used sequences from one mitochondrial gene and six nuclear loci to confirm genetically the presumed identity of four large terns with an orange bill seen in Western Europe over the past decades. This multilocus genotyping (multilocus barcoding) approach confirmed that one bird was a Lesser Crested Tern Sterna bengalensis, as suspected based on i...

Although reproductive assurance (RA) might play a central role in the evolution of the selfing rate, this hypothesis has never been seriously investigated in an hermaphroditic animal. We studied the mating system of the freshwater snail Physa acuta in which the availability of mating partners might be highly variable, because this species is an eff...

Eight polymorphic microsatellite markers have been isolated from a microsatellite-enriched DNA library from the Stable Fly, Stomoxys calcitrans. These loci exhibited four to 15 alleles per locus and an expected heterozygosity ranging from 0.19 to 0.84 in the three populations studied from La Réunion island (Indian Ocean). They should therefore be v...

We report here the characteristics of 10 microsatellite markers isolated from a microsatellite-enriched DNA library from Antirhea borbonica, Gmel (Rubiaceae). Antirhea borbonica is an endemic tree on the islands of La Réunion and Mauritius (Indian Ocean) where it occurs on young lava flows (fragmented and perturbed habitat) and in old primary fores...

Abstract The respective role of factors acting on population functioning can be inferred from a variety of approaches, including population genetics and demography. We here investigated the role of four of these factors (mating systems, population size, bottlenecks and migration) in the hermaphroditic freshwater snail Physa acuta. Twenty-four popul...

Six microsatellite loci were isolated from the bruchid Acanthoscelides obtectus Say (Coleoptera: Bruchidae). Each locus was polymorphic, with the number of alleles ranging from 3 to 18. We found high levels of within-population variation at most loci, with heterozygosities ranging from 0 to 0.75. Cross-species amplification of these loci was tested...

We present data for seven new markers isolated from a microsatellite-enriched DNA library from the freshwater snail Physa acuta. Six of them appear to be conserved in Physa cubensis. These loci might be useful for analysing population structure and reconstructing the story of invasion of freshwaters on a worldwide scale by P. acuta.

The population biology of the schistosome-vector snail Bulinus truncatus was studied in an irrigation system near Marrakech, Morocco using both genetic and demographic approaches. The population genetic survey was conducted in 4 sites, 2 sites being sampled on 2 separate occasions. Individuals were genotyped at 6 microsatellite loci. No variability...

Variations in mitochondrial DNA characters were used to characterize two morphologically similar and sympatric species of Neotropical terrestrial rodents of the genus Proechimys (Mammalia: Echimyidae). We sequenced both cytochrome b (1140pb) and part of the control region (445pb) from four individuals of P. cuvieri and five of P. cayennensis from F...

The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) undergoes crowding-induced phase transformation from solitary to gregarious, which involves changes in behaviour, colour, development, morphometry, fecundity and endocrine physiology. During recession, solitary locusts persist in the central, drier part of the species' range in small pocket populations that...

The relationships of Nesomyinae, a group of murid rodents endemic to the island of Madagascar, were investigated with two comparative molecular approaches. Compared to those of other muroid rodents representing Murinae, Cricetinae, Cricetomyinae. Arvicolinae, and Sigmodontinae, complete sequences of the 12S rRNA mitochondrial gene suggest that the...

In order to study expression of a 90-kDa heat-shock protein during amphibian oogenesis at physiological temperature, we isolated a Pleurodeles waltl hsc90 cDNA by screening an ovarian cDNA library with a chicken hsp90 cDNA probe. The cDNA thus obtained—named Pw90—shows a high homology level with the hsp90 gene in other species. RNase protection ana...

Complete sequences of the mitochondrial 12S rDNA gene were obtained in 11 taxa of Muridae in order to ascertain the molecular systematics of Mus crociduroides, an endemic mouse from the island of Sumatra. Parsimony and distance analysis on different kinds of nucleotide changes (transitions, transversions, insertions and deletions) all suggest that...

Microdissection of the "globular" and "granular" landmark loops of Pleurodeles lampbrush chromosomes and subsequent cloning of their DNA yielded several recombinant clones. The 6.6-kb insert of one of them was subcloned and the 600 bp of one subclone was characterized by Southern and slot hybridizations as well as by sequencing. This sequence, desi...

Amphibian lampbrush chromosome loops exhibit morphological variability in their RNP matrix. The biological significance of such variability remains unknown. In order to approach this problem, the structural organization of each RNP matrix type was analyzed in relation to transcriptional and post-transcriptional processes. First, autoradiographic an...