Honors Program Theses
Award/Availability
Open Access Honors Program Thesis
First Advisor
Peter Berendzen
Abstract
A major challenge for systematists is clearly identifying species early after a speciation event (Frost and Kluge, 1994; Wiens and Servedio, 2000; Coyne and Orr, 2004). Traditionally species delimitation is made based on morphological characteristics, behavioral differences, and/or genetic data. However, for cryptic species lineages, these approaches do not work as well because the lineages have subtle overlapping morphological and behavioral differences and lineage sorting may not be complete (Raxworthy et al., 2007). A far less common approach is to use ecological niche models (ENMs) to help identify new species. This approach holds strong potential for cryptic species in which a consensus has not been reached (e.g., Raxworth et al., 2007). Comparing ENMs of two populations can supply evidence of geographic isolation by revealing areas of unsuitable habitat. This would provide evidence supporting the populations as distinct species because gene flow between the two is unlikely because it would involve migrating across the intervening region of unsuitable habitat. Geographic isolation and areas of unsuitable habitat are indicated by a significantly low degree of niche overlap between the ENMs for each population. A major advantage of using ENMs for species delimitation is it takes environmental data into account which otherwise would be ignored. Therefore, ecological niche models were utilized to address the heated debate as to whether the disjunct clades of the cryptic fish species, Etheostoma blennioides, represent distinct species.
Year of Submission
2012
Department
Department of Biology
University Honors Designation
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors
Date Original
5-2012
Object Description
1 PDF file (38 pages)
Copyright
©2012 Jack Alphonse Kosmicki
Recommended Citation
Kosmicki, Jack Alphonse, "Using Ecological Niche Modeling To Resolve Cryptic Taxa Within the Greenside Darter Species Complex" (2012). Honors Program Theses. 728.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/hpt/728
Comments
If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.