Shearwaters phylogeography

Elena, who recently worked in the lab, has published a paper in MPE on the phylogeopgraphy of shearwaters using morphological and molecular data (sequencing Cytb and Domain I of the mitochondrial control region). They showed that oceanic fronts like the Almeria-Oran Oceanographic Front, can be important barriers shaping populations and species structures in seabirds. This front is the real boundary between the Mediterranean and Atlantic surface waters and thus plays an important role as a distribution barrier opposing the previous hypothesis that the Gibraltar Strait was the barrier.
As the control region and Cytb did not provide quite enough resolution about the degree of isolation between different populations in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic populations (these popualtions show an increase in size from east to west), perhaps a population study of the ectoparasitic lice of shearwaters, that have genes that evolve faster than their hosts, could be used to gain further information on the population structure of shearwaters as well as providing data for the study of cospeciation at a population level.