Category Archives: Uncategorized

Invasive species threaten native biota, not only through competition, predation and infection, but also via hybridization. Human-induced hybridization has important implications from the point of view of conservation as it results in genetic replacement – a loss of biodiversity at … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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.

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 →

In a paper published in Annales Zoologici Fennici we tested the influence of shared ancestry and climate on the variation in life history traits in Triturus newts. Some variation can be explained by climate, some by shared ancestry and some … Continue reading →

My application for a Newton International Fellowship has been succesful! I will conduct this two-year postdoctoral fellowship, using the Ion Torrent protocol I designed during my postdoc at Naturalis to study hybridzones in Triturus, in the lab of Professor Terry Burke … Continue reading →

The crested newt traditionally referred to as ‘Triturus karelinii’ comprises three distinct mitochondrial DNA clades. These clades are found in the east, the centre and the west of the range. The difference between mitochondrial DNA clades is comparable to the … Continue reading →