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AbstractThis chapter focuses on a model for building evaluation capacity. The approach embeds evaluative thinking and practice into the work of higher education leaders, faculty, and staff who need evidence to guide their planning and decision making. Communities of Learning, Inquiry, and Practice (CLIPs) are a type of community of practice; they are informal, dynamic groups of faculty and staff who inquire and learn together about their professional practice and operate within a support structure specifically designed to fit the higher education context. This chapter describes two institutions in which the CLIPs model was implemented—a community college in the United States and a medical school in Canada. Based on the results from these case examples, seven guiding principles are proposed for implementing successful CLIPs. This model is adaptable to organizations beyond higher education.

Drosophila suzukii, or spotted-wing drosophila, is now an established pest in many parts of the world, causing significant damage to numerous fruit crop industries. Native to East Asia, D. suzukii infestations started in the United States a decade ago, occupying a wide range of climates. To better understand invasion ecology of this pest, knowledge of past migration events, population structure, and genetic diversity is needed. In this study, we sequenced whole genomes of 237 individual flies collected across the continental United States, as well as several sites in Europe, Brazil, and Asia, to identify and analyze hundreds of thousands of genetic markers. We observed strong population structure between Western and Eastern US populations, but no evidence of any population structure between different latitudes within the continental United States, suggesting that there are no broad-scale adaptations occurring in response to differences in winter climates. We detect admixture from Hawaii to the Western United States and from the Eastern United States to Europe, in agreement with previously identified introduction routes inferred from microsatellite analysis. We also detect potential signals of admixture from the Western United States back to Asia, which could have important implications for shipping and quarantine policies for exported agriculture. We anticipate this large genomic dataset will spur future research into the genomic adaptations underlying D. suzukii pest activity and development of novel control methods for this agricultural pest.

The evolutionary importance of hybridization and introgression has long been debated1. Hybrids are usually rare and unfit, but even infrequent hybridization can aid adaptation by transferring beneficial traits between species. Here we use genomic tools to investigate introgression in Heliconius, a rapidly radiating genus of neotropical butterflies widely used in studies of ecology, behaviour, mimicry and speciation2,3,4,5. We sequenced the genome of Heliconius melpomene and compared it with other taxa to investigate chromosomal evolution in Lepidoptera and gene flow among multiple Heliconius species and races. Among 12,669 predicted genes, biologically important expansions of families of chemosensory and Hox genes are particularly noteworthy. Chromosomal organization has remained broadly conserved since the Cretaceous period, when butterflies split from the Bombyx (silkmoth) lineage. Using genomic resequencing, we show hybrid exchange of genes between three co-mimics, Heliconius melpomene, Heliconius timareta and Heliconius elevatus, especially at two genomic regions that control mimicry pattern. We infer that closely related Heliconius species exchange protective colour-pattern genes promiscuously, implying that hybridization has an important role in adaptive radiation. ; We thank the governments of Colombia, Peru and Panama for permission to collect the butterflies. Sequencing was funded by contributions from consortium members. We thank M. Abanto for assistance in raising the inbred line. Individual laboratories were funded by the Leverhulme Trust (C.D.J.), the John Fell Fund and Christ Church College, Oxford (L. C. F.), The Royal Society (M.J., C.D.J.), the NSF (W.O.M., M. R. K., R. D. R., S. M., A. D. B.), the NIH (M. R. K., S. L. S., J.A.Y.), the CNRS (M.J.), the ERC (M.J., P. W. H. H.), the Banco de la Republica and COLCIENCAS (M. L.) and the BBSRC (J.M., C.D.J., M.L.B. and R.H.f.-C.). (Leverhulme Trust; John Fell Fund; Christ Church College, Oxford; Royal Society; NSF; NIH; CNRS; ERC; Banco de la ...