Séverine Vuilleumier Varisco

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In human-dominated landscapes, populations and species extinctions are directly related to habitat destruction and fragmentation. To provide genetic diversity as well as population viability, individual exchanges among isolated populations must be maintained. Therefore, animal dispersal processes in fragmented landscape become an important topic for ecologists, and ecological networks planning has become one of the major challenges for landscape planners. Identification of habitat patches as well as assessm

Animal dispersal in a fragmented landscape depends on the complex interaction between landscape structure and animal behavior. To better understand how individuals disperse, it is important to explicitly represent the properties of organisms and the landsc ...

A workshop recently held at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) was dedicated to understanding the genetic basis of adaptive change, taking stock of the different approaches developed in theoretical population genetics and land ...

Major climatic and geological events but also population history (secondary contacts) have generated cycles of population isolation and connection of long and short periods. Recent empirical and theoretical studies suggest that fast evolutionary processes ...

Occurrence of bacteria belonging to the order Chlamydiales was investigated for the first time in common toad (Bufo bufo) tadpole populations collected from 41 ponds in the Geneva metropolitan area, Switzerland. A Chlamydiales-specific real-time PCR was us ...

Ease of worldwide travel provides increased opportunities for organisms not only to colonize new environments but also to encounter related but diverged populations. Such events of reconnection and secondary contact of previously isolated populations are w ...

The effect of heterogeneous environments upon the dynamics of invasion and the eradication or control of invasive species is poorly understood, although it is a major challenge for biodiversity conservation. Here, we first investigate how the probability a ...

Disentangling the mechanisms mediating the coexistence of habitat specialists and generalists has been a long-standing subject of investigation. However, the roles of species traits and environmental and spatial factors have not been assessed in a unifying ...

This paper presents a method based on a geographical information system (GIS) to model ecological networks in a fragmented landscape. The ecological networks are generated with the help of a landscape model (which integrate human activities) and with a wil ...

Host shifts can cause novel infectious diseases, and is a key process in diversification. Disentangling the effects of host shift vs. those of cospeciation is non-trivial as both can result in phylogenic congruence. We develop a new framework based on netw ...

We simulated a meta-population with random dispersal among demes but local mating within demes to investigate conditions under which a dominant female-determining gene W, with no individual selection advantage, can invade and become fixed in females, chang ...

Many features of virus populations make them excellent candidates for population genetic study, including a very high rate of mutation, high levels of nucleotide diversity, exceptionally large census population sizes, and frequent positive selection. However, these attributes also mean that special care must be taken in population genetic inference. For example, highly skewed offspring distributions, frequent and severe population bottleneck events associated with infection and compartmentalization, and str

Ocean currents, prevailing winds, and the hierarchical structures of river networks are known to create asymmetries in re-colonization between habitat patches. The impacts of such asymmetries on metapopulation persistence are seldom considered, especially ...

Purpose of review: An improved understanding of how recombination affects the evolutionary history of HIV is crucial to understand its current and future evolution. The present review aims to disentangle the manifold effects of recombination on HIV by disc ...

Population genetic differentiation characterizes the repartition of alleles among populations. It is commonly thought that genetic differentiation measures, such as G(ST) and D, should be near zero when allele frequencies are close to their expected value ...

Extinction, recolonization and local adaption are common in natural spatially structured populations. Understanding their effect upon genetic variation is important for systems such as GMO management, or avoidance of drug resistance. Theoretical studies on ...

Ecological strategies are integral to understanding species survival in different environments. However, how habitat specialisation is involved in such strategies is not fully understood, particularly in heterogeneous and disturbed environments. Here, we s ...

Understanding how new phenotypes evolve is challenging because intermediate stages in transitions from ancestral to derived phenotypes often remain elusive. Here we describe and evaluate a new mechanism facilitating the transition from sexual reproduction ...

Dispersal is often viewed as a process on which the landscape has little effect. This is particularly apparent in populations’ genetic and ecological studies, where isolation by distance is generally tested using a Euclidean distance between populations. H ...

Connectivity among demes in a metapopulation depends on both the landscape's and the focal organism's properties (including its mobility and cognitive abilities). Using individual-based simulations, we contrast the consequences of three different cognitive ...

Séverine Vuilleumier Varisco

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Dispersal modelling : integrating landscape features, behaviour and metapopulations

Animal dispersal modelling: handling landscape features and related animal choices

Uncovering the genetic basis of adaptive change: on the intersection of landscape genomics and theoretical population genetics

Turnover and accumulation of genetic diversity across large time-scale cycles of isolation and connection of populations

Indication of spatially random occurrence of Chlamydia-like organisms in Bufo bufo tadpoles from ponds located in the Geneva metropolitan area

The Genomic Signature of Population Reconnection Following Isolation: From Theory to HIV

Invasion and eradication of a competitively superior species in heterogeneous landscapes

Coexistence of specialist and generalist species is shaped by dispersal and environmental factors

Map of ecological networks for landscape planning

Host shift and cospeciation rate estimation from co-phylogenies

Invasion an fixation of sex-reversal genes

On the importance of skewed offspring distributions and background selection in virus population genetics

Effects of Colonization Asymmetries on Metapopulation Persistence

Contribution of recombination to the evolutionary history of HIV

On the transition of genetic differentiation from isolation to panmixia: What we can learn from G(ST) and D

The fixation of locally beneficial alleles in a metapopulation

Ecological strategies in stable and disturbed environments depend on species specialisation

Positive feedback in the transition from sexual reproduction to parthenogenesis

Landscape structure affects dispersal in the greater white-toothed shrew: inference between genetic and simulated ecological distances

Effects of cognitives abilities on metapopulation connectivity