One fig to bind them all: host conservatism in a fig wasp community unraveled by cospeciation analyses among pollinating and nonpollinating fig wasps.

The study of chalcid wasps that live within syconia of fig trees (Moraceae, Ficus), provides a unique opportunity to investigate the evolution of specialized communities of insects. By conducting cospeciation analyses between figs of section Galoglychia and some of their associated fig wasps, we show that, although host switches and duplication have evidently played a role in the construction of the current associations, the global picture is one of significant cospeciation throughout the evolution of these communities. Contrary to common belief, nonpollinating wasps are at least as constrained as pollinators by their host association in their diversification in this section. By adapting a randomization test in a supertree context, we further confirm that wasp phylogenies are significantly congruent with each other, and build a "wasp community" supertree that retrieves Galoglychia taxonomic subdivisions. Altogether, these results probably reflect wasp host specialization but also, to some extent, they might indicate that niche saturation within the fig prevents recurrent intrahost speciation and host switching. Finally, a comparison of ITS2 sequence divergence of cospeciating pairs of wasps suggests that the diversification of some pollinating and nonpollinating wasps of Galoglychia figs has been synchronous but that pollinating wasps exhibit a higher rate of molecular evolution.

Appel Botha: The abc of a three hundred year old divorce case.

In 1683 Maria Kickers and Jan Cornelitz got married in Cape Town. Today, 330 years later, the living patrilineal descendants of Maria's four sons, number in excess of 76,000 people. Curiously, none of them carry the surname Cornelitz - in fact, they are all called Botha and include former President P.W. Botha, general Louis Botha and Minister Pik Botha. The reason for this anomaly is also the reason why Jan got divorced from Maria in 1700. According to Maria's testimonies she did indeed have a long term relationship with Frederik Botha, but in her defence she claimed that her husband was impotent and that he actually encouraged her. Other witnesses, presumably prompted by Jan, gave testimonies that implied that Maria was in fact licentious. We combined haplotyping with the AmpFℓSTR(®) Yfiler™ kit with deep-rooting genealogies to show that Maria's first son was actually fathered by Ferdinandus Appel and that roughly half the living Bothas (38,000 people) actually descend from Ferdinandus Appel while the remaining three sons all stem from the same father, presumably Frederik Botha, and this implies that Maria's husband did not father any of her sons.