Author Archives: Ben Wielstra
Two notes on the Kosswig’s newt
Last spring Emin Bozkurt and I were conducting fieldwork in Turkey. Although we were specifically targeting crested newts, we came across many Lissotriton newts as well. We were quite surprised to catch some paedomorphic Kosswig’s newts (Lissotriton kosswigi). Paedomorphism is … Continue reading
A crested newt refugium in the Carpathians
The current Pleistocene Ice Age has heavily influenced the distribution of species. One could argue it still does – the Ice Age is not a thing of the past, we are now merely experiencing a relatively warm interval (called the … Continue reading
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship
I have been awarded an ‘outgoing’ Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. This will allow me to visit the lab of Brad Shaffer at the University of California, Los Angeles in the USA to learn sequence capture by target enrichment for two years. … Continue reading
Trying to crack the crested newt phylogeny – and failing
The four main groups of crested newt species differ in body shape. This morphological variation is correlated with ecological differences: sturdier newts are more terrestrial and slenderer newts more aquatic. This suggests that the differentiation in body shape drove their … Continue reading
NWO ALW Open grant
A grant proposal I wrote together with Pim Arntzen was successful and will allow us to hire a PhD student to work on amphibian hybrid zones.
Mapping the European Triturus species
In 2014 the New Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles of Europe (the first update since 1997’s original atlas) was published in the journal Amphibia-Reptilia. In the new atlas, the crested newts and marbled newts were mapped as such, even though … Continue reading
Ribs ‘n’ genes: Triturus hybrid zones
Hybrid zones are the regions where different species meet, mate and produce offspring. In a study just published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society we explore nine Triturus hybrid zones (all but one existing in nature), using a … Continue reading
The final nail in the coffin of Triturus arntzeni
During my work on the crested newt traditionally referred to as Triturus karelinii it soon became clear that more than one species is involved (although sorting out the details took a bit of time and is still not quite finished). … Continue reading
Triturus goes genomics, kind of
You can only learn so much about a study system if you have few genetic markers available. Particularly if that study system has an extensive history of hybridization, as is the case for Triturus. Because salamanders have massive and complex … Continue reading
Mitochondrial mess-up
The different crested newt species typically have very distinct mitochondrial DNA. However, as these guys hybridize like rabbits, often the mitochondrial DNA of one species has locally been transferred (introgressed) into the wrong species. ‘Locally’ can refer to quite an … Continue reading
Wielstra Lab 