Landscapes of genomic variation

When comparing how genetic diversity changes along the chromosomes of related species, a remarkable feature emerges: the ups and downs are shared across species! These correlations are not expected under neutrality, so this raises the question of what other processes can produce these correlations?

We have used forward-in-time genetic simulations to disentangle the contribution of different processes, such as natural selection, GC-biased gene conversion, and shared variation, in maintaining these correlations over long time scales. We studied this phenomenon in a radiation of monkeyflowers and in the great apes.