Genome-enabled development of DNA markers for ecology, evolution and conservation

Abstract

Molecular markers have become a fundamental piece of modern biology's toolkit. In the last decade, new genomic resources from model organisms and advances in DNA sequencing technology have altered the way that these tools are developed, alleviating the marker limitation that researchers previously faced and opening new areas of research for studies of non-model organisms. This availability of markers is directly responsible for advances in several areas of research, including fine-scaled estimation of population structure and demography, the inference of species phylogenies, and the examination of detailed selective pressures in non-model organisms. This review summarizes methods for the development of large numbers of DNA markers in non-model organisms, the challenges encountered when utilizing different methods, and new research applications resulting from these advances.