
Tereza JezkovaMiami University | MU · Department of Biology
Tereza Jezkova
PhD
About
73
Publications
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Introduction
In my research I use genetic and environmental data to reconstruct species responses to climatic changes, and to evaluate factors driving genetic patterns across the landscape. I am focused on mammals, reptiles, and insects of the Sonoran, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts and the Arizona Sky Islands.
Additional affiliations
January 2011 - January 2015
Publications
Publications (73)
Aim
Temperature plays an important role in determining distributions of ectothermic species, yet many ectotherms have wide distributions across diverse environmental conditions. Our goal was to model regional differences in annual and seasonal activity patterns among populations of Phrynosoma platyrhinos across its climatically diverse distribution...
Species often experience spatial environmental heterogeneity across their range, and populations may exhibit signatures of adaptation to local environmental characteristics. Other population genetic processes, such as migration and genetic drift, can impede the effects of local adaptation. Genetic drift in particular can have a pronounced effect on...
Background
The increasing number of chromosome-level genome assemblies has advanced our knowledge and understanding of macroevolutionary processes. Here, we introduce the genome of the desert horned lizard, Phrynosoma platyrhinos, an iguanid lizard occupying extreme desert conditions of the American southwest. We conduct analysis of the chromosomal...
Occurrence data used to build species distribution models often include historical records from locations in which the species no longer exists. When these records are paired with contemporary environmental values that no longer represent the conditions the species experienced, the model creates false associations that hurt predictive performance....
Different groups of taxa exhibit varying degree of climatic niche conservatism or divergence due to evolutionary constraints imposed on taxa and distributional relationships among them. Herein, we explore to what extent regional environmental conditions that taxa occupy affect climatic niche overlap between pairs of congeneric species of Peromyscus...
Ecological niche differentiation is a process that accompanies lineage diversification and community assembly. Traditionally, the degree of niche differentiation is estimated by contrasting niche hypervolumes of two taxa, reconstructed using ecologically relevant variables. These methods disregard the fact that niches can shift in different ways an...
The opposing forces of gene flow and isolation are two major processes shaping genetic diversity. Understanding how these vary across space and time is necessary to identify the environmental features that promote diversification. The detection of considerable geographic structure in taxa from the arid Nearctic has prompted research into the driver...
Hybridization facilitates recombination between divergent genetic lineages and can be shaped by both neutral and selective processes. Upon hybridization, loci with no net fitness effects introgress randomly from parental species into the genomes of hybrid individuals. Conversely, alleles from one parental species at some loci may provide a selectiv...
Context
Environmental heterogeneity across species distributions creates diverse conditions that individual populations encounter. As a result, local selective pressures vary across a species range, leading to individual populations becoming locally adapted and therefore better suited to their environment. Recent advances in genomics and bioinforma...
The Smooth Greensnake (Opheodrys vernalis) ranges from the glaciated regions of Northeastern United States and Canada down to scattered populations in Northern Mexico, Southern Texas, and Eastern Utah. In Ohio, the Smooth Greensnake is somewhat continuously distributed only within the very Northeastern part of the state, but outside of this region...
In numerous clades, divergent sister species have largely non-overlapping geographic ranges. This pattern presumably arises because species diverged in allopatry or parapatry, prior to a subsequent contact. Here, we provide population-genomic evidence for the opposite scenario: previously sympatric ecotypes that have spatially separated into diverg...
Hybridization can have a profound negative effect on population fitness when species exhibit divergence in adaptive traits. The Streamside salamander, Ambystoma barbouri, and the Smallmouth salamander, A. texanum, are closely related species differentiated primarily by breeding habitat and reproduction-related traits, but previous work suggests pat...
The southern US and northern Mexico serve as an ideal region to test alternative hypotheses regarding biotic diversification. Genomic data can now be combined with sophisticated computational models to quantify the impacts of paleoclimate change, geographic features, and habitat heterogeneity on spatial patterns of genetic diversity. In this study...
The southwestern and central US serve as an ideal region to test alternative hypotheses regarding biotic diversification. Genomic data can now be combined with sophisticated computational models to quantify the impacts of paleoclimate change, geographic features, and habitat heterogeneity on spatial patterns of genetic diversity. In this study we c...
Reptiles of Ohio, 2021. Ohio Biological Survey.
Chapter: "Eastern Musk Turtle, Sternotherus odoratus"
- A comprehensive review of the natural history of the Eastern Musk Turtle in Ohio and beyond.
The Pacific chorus frogs are a complex of three wide-ranging species (i.e. Hyliola hypochondriaca, Hyliola regilla, Hyliola sierra) whose current taxonomy remains unresolved. We conducted species delimitation analyses of these taxa using fragments of the cytochrome b and 12S–16S mtDNA genes to assess the species diversity. Importantly, we included...
The Pacific chorus frogs are a complex of three wide-ranging species (i.e. Hyliola hypochondriaca, Hyliola regilla, Hyliola sierra) whose current taxonomy remains unresolved. We conducted species delimitation analyses of these taxa using fragments of the cytochrome b and 12S-16S mtDNA genes to assess the species diversity. Importantly, we included...
Aim: I assess the impact of interspecific competition on species' post-glacial range expansions into previously glaciated areas. I hypothesize that expansion of one species (the founder) after the last glacial maximum (LGM) into areas that were glaciated has hindered expansion of its competitor (the latecomer). If true, I predict that range and nic...
The study of recently diverged lineages whose geographical ranges come into contact can provide insight into the early stages of speciation and the potential roles of reproductive isolation in generating and maintaining species. Such insight can also be important for understanding the strategies and challenges for delimiting species within recently...
Aims
As global temperatures rise, the survival of many species may hinge on whether they can shift their climatic niches quickly enough to avoid extinction. Previous analyses among species and populations suggest that species’ niches change far slower than rates of projected climate change. However, it is unclear how quickly niches can change over...
Mammals have played a foundational role in the explosive growth of phylogeography over the past 30 years that it has been a recognized discipline. Novel discoveries of geographic patterns and processes using phylogeographic approaches have integrated disciplines including biogeography, evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation biology. Here,...
The study of recently diverged lineages whose geographical ranges come into contact can provide insight into the early stages of speciation and the potential roles of reproductive isolation in generating and maintaining species. Such insight can also be important for understanding the strategies and challenges for delimiting species within recently...
Invasive species provide powerful in situ experimental systems for studying evolution in response to selective pressures in novel habitats. While research has shown that phenotypic evolution can occur rapidly in nature, few examples exist of genome‐wide adaptation on short ‘ecological’ timescales. Burmese pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) have be...
The Mojave rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) inhabits deserts and arid grasslands of the western United States and Mexico. Despite considerable interest in its highly toxic venom and the recognition of two subspecies, no molecular studies have characterized range-wide genetic diversity and population structure or tested species limits within C. scu...
Climate may play important roles in speciation, such as causing the range fragmentation that underlies allopatric speciation (through niche conservatism) or driving divergence of parapatric populations along climatic gradients (through niche divergence). Here, we developed new methods to test the frequency of climate niche conservatism and divergen...
Investigating secondary contact of historically isolated lineages can provide insight into how selection and drift influence genomic divergence and admixture. Here, we studied the genomic landscape of divergence and introgression following secondary contact between lineages of the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) to determine whethe...
Topographically complex regions on land and in the oceans feature hotspots of biodiversity that reflect geological influences on ecological and evolutionary processes. Over geologic time, topographic diversity gradients wax and wane over millions of years, tracking tectonic or climatic history. Topographic diversity gradients from the present day a...
Animal phyla vary dramatically in species richness (from one species to 11.2 million), but the causes of this variation remain largely unknown. Animals have also evolved striking variation in morphology and ecology, including sessile marine taxa lacking heads, eyes, limbs, and complex organs (e.g., sponges), parasitic worms (e.g., nematodes, platyh...
Dietary studies are important for understanding predator-prey relationships and species interactions because they provide information on the trophic resources available to predators and their potential impact on prey populations. We relied on stomach contents of museum specimens and literature records to examine ontogenetic (size-related), sexual,...
Rates of change in climatic niches in plant and animal populations are much slower than projected climate change Climate change may soon threaten much of global biodiversity. A critical question is: can species undergo niche shifts of sufficient speed and magnitude to persist within their current geographic ranges? Here, we analyse niche shifts amo...
Strong spatial sorting of genetic variation in contiguous populations is often explained by local adaptation or secondary contact following allopatric divergence. A third explanation, spatial sorting by stochastic effects of range expansion, has been considered less often though theoretical models suggest it should be widespread, if ephemeral. In a...
Boa is a neotropical genus of snakes historically recognized as monotypic despite its expansive distribution. The distinct morphological traits and color patterns exhibited by these snakes, together with the wide diversity of ecosystems they inhabit, collectively suggest that the genus may represent multiple species. Morphological variation within...
During climate change, species are often assumed to shift their geographic distributions (geographic ranges) in order to track environmental conditions – niches – to which they are adapted. Recent work, however, suggests that niches do not always remain conserved during climate change but shift instead, allowing populations to persist in place or e...
Reconstructing the assembly of local ecological communities requires insight from a wide range of disciplines
including biogeography, paleontology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Community assembly depends on the
availability of species in a regional species pool (a ‘‘biota’’), which itself is assembled through a history of
diversification, geo...
How does range expansion affect genetic diversity in species with different ecologies, and do different types of genetic markers lead to different conclusions? We addressed these questions by assessing the genetic consequences of post-glacial range expansion using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and nuclear restriction site associated DNA (RAD) sequencin...
Reptiles in desert environments depend on habitat thermal quality to regulate their body temperature and perform biological activities. Understanding thermoregulation with respect to habitat thermal quality is critical for accurate predictions of species responses to climate change. We evaluated thermoregulation in Goode's horned lizard, Phrynosoma...
The Great Basin pocket mouse, Perognathus parvus, inhabits temperate shrub-steppe and arid grassland biomes throughout the Columbia Plateau, Great Basin, and adjacent regions of western North America. We used both mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and nuclear DNA (nDNA) sequences to address phylogenetic and biogeographic structure within the P. parvus spec...
Hybridization and gene introgression can occur frequently between closely related taxa, but appear to be rare phenomena among members of the species-rich West Indian radiation of Anolis lizards. We investigated the pattern and possible mechanism of introgression between two sister species from Puerto Rico, Anolis pulchellus and Anolis krugi, using...
During Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles, the geographic range is often assumed to have shifted as a species tracks its climatic niche. Alternatively, the geographic range would not necessarily shift if a species can adapt in situ to a changing environment. The potential for a species to persist in place might increase with the diversity of h...
Two factors that can lead to geographic structuring in conspecific populations are barriers to dispersal and climatic stability. Populations that occur in different physiographic regions may be restricted to those areas by physical and/or ecological barriers, which may facilitate the formation of phylogeographic clades. Long-term climatic stability...
The desert pocket mouse (Chaetodipus penicillatus) comprises 6 nominate subspecies that occupy warm, sandy desert-scrub habitats across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. The most thorough morphological assessment within the species noted variable levels of distinctiveness, leading to uncertainty regarding the geographic distributions of subspecies. S...
Comparative phylogeography is a powerful method for testing hypotheses of evolutionary diversification in ecological communities. Caribbean lizards of the genus Anolis are a species-rich group and a well-known example of adaptive radiation. In 1983, Ernest Williams suggested that species of Anolis that belong to the same ‘climate type’ (taxa that o...
Documenting variation in organismal traits is essential to understanding the ecology of natural populations. We relied on stomach contents of preserved specimens and literature records to assess ontogenetic, intersexual, temporal, and geographic variations in the feeding ecology of the North American Great Basin Rattlesnake (Crotalus lutosus Klaube...
Species with restricted geographic distributions consisting of isolated populations are particularly susceptible to extinction because these demes face an increased risk of disappearing due to environmental, demographic, and genetic stochasticity. We used partial DNA sequences of the cytochrome b (1083 bp) and ND2 (1041 bp) mitochondrial genes to i...
Aim We investigated the evolutionary relationships and historical biogeography of two lizard species ( Anolis desechensis and Anolis monensis ) endemic to small oceanic islands in the eastern Caribbean Sea.
Location Desecheo, Mona and Monito Islands, in the Mona Passage, and Puerto Rico, eastern Caribbean Sea.
Methods We reconstructed the phylogene...