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Topic: Speciation of Elephant Subgroups Resources: Nadin Rohland, David Reich, Swapan Mallick, Matthias Meyer, Richard E Green, Nicholas J Georgiadis, Alfred L Roca, Michael Hofreiter. Genomic DNA Sequences from Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth Reveal Deep Speciation of Forest and Savanna Elephants. PLoS Biology, 2010; 8 (12): e1000564 DOI:

Rohland N, Malaspinas A. S, Pollack J. L, Slatkin M, Matheus P, et al. (2007) Proboscidean mitogenomics: chronology and mode of elephant evolution using mastodon as outgroup. PLoS Biol 5: e207. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050207.

Shoshani J (1998) Understanding proboscidean evolution: A formidable task. Trends Ecol Evol 13: 480–487.

Roca AL, Georgiadis N, Pecon-Slattery J, O'Brien SJ (2001) Genetic evidence for two species of elephant in Africa. Science 293: 1473–1477.

Debruyne R (2005) A case study of apparent conflict between molecular phylogenies: The interrelationships of African elephants. Cladistics 21: 31–50. Assignment due Oct. 1st: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopatric_speciation 3 Suggested Improvements

    1. There was no mention of migration or founder effect which can also lead to allopatric speciation.
    2. In the first paragraph the author writes "the vicariant populations then undergo genotypic or phenotypic divergence..." which would be better phrased as "populations then undergo genotypic and phenotypic divergance..." because to have phenotypic change there must be a change in genotype and for speciation to occur phenotypic changes must occur.
    3. One thing that should be added to the article is how scientists define two separate species, which can be a tricky subject and should be explained thoroughly for the readers.

Added Sentence: The definition of what causes two organisms to be different species is quite ambiguous but the simplest definition is that if the two organisms cannot interbreed they are different species. Nadin Rohland, David Reich, Swapan Mallick, Matthias Meyer, Richard E Green, Nicholas J Georgiadis, Alfred L Roca, Michael Hofreiter. Genomic DNA Sequences from Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth Reveal Deep Speciation of Forest and Savanna Elephants. PLoS Biology, 2010; 8 (12): e1000564 DOI: