In her undergraduate project at the University of Alberta, Rowan French (currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto) led the genetic analysis that discovered that Gibson’s Sand Tiger beetle was more isolated and threatened than previously thought. An article in Folio by Andrew Lyle describes the process of discovery that the two indistinguishably coloured but geographically separate populations of this beetle were in fact, two separate subspecies, and discusses the conservation implications.
The research provides evidence supporting claims made in a 1977 doctoral thesis by Grant Gaumer, who proposed that the two populations were similar in colouration as a result of convergent evolution rather than common ancestry. The larvae of the beetles show morphological differences, but the adults do not, and this genetic analysis by French et al. now substantiates the 50 year old theory.
The visual abstract below summarizes this work.
The scientific article can be found here, where it was published in Conservation Genetics. Congratulations to Rowan and her team of co-authors!
The Sperling Lab 