ANITA S. KLEIN Associate Professor Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Department of Plant Biology Program in Genetics Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1981 Email: anita.klein@unh.edu

DNA-based molecular techniques provide new approaches to understanding Evolution and Population structure. Insights from Molecular Population Genetics and Systematics can be applied to understand and control the spread of exotic organisms, such as invasive algal species. I am currently collaborating with Arthur Mathieson (Plant Biology) and Kelly Cullen (Resource Economics) in a project to track the origins and diversity of Codium fragile ssp. tomentosodies, the oyster thief, in Northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes. This coenocytic green macroalgae, first reached the Gulf of Maine in the 1970’s. In the last two decades populations of C. fragile ssp. tomentosodies explosively expanded, displacing native algae and disrupting shellfish beds.

Other Population and Evolutionary Genetics studies from my lab include Ph.D. research by Aaron Wallace (2004) on formation of hybrid swarms in saltmarsh populations of Fucus (Mathieson et al. 2006, Wallace et al. 2005, 2003) and a phylogeographic study by Brian Teasdale (2003) of the origins of red algae Porphyra umbilicalis populations since the Pleistocene glaciations.

Similar approaches have been applied in a phylogenetic analysis of North American spruces, attempts to identify the species of macrofossils by amplifying ancient DNA, and surveys of genetic variation in diverse forest tree species. Much of this work has concentrated on DNA sequence variation in the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacers among and between species. These data will be used to develop appropriate evolutionary and ecological framework with which to predict the consequences of global climate change on biodiversity. See SNP Information.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

LABORATORY INFORMATION