Juan Carlos Motamayor

The paper introduces a pipeline using invariant coordinate selection (ICS) to identify outlier loci under selection across multiple genomic scans, showing improved performance over Mahalanobis distance.

The paper examines recombination hotspots in cocoa tree populations, finding higher rates in domesticated and bottlenecked populations, and links them to genetic differentiation and specific genomic features.

The paper sequenced 200 genomes of Theobroma cacao to show that domestication of the Criollo population occurred around 3,600 years ago, with strong selection on genes related to anthocyanin, theobromine metabolism, and disease resistance, and found a negative correlation between Criollo ancestry and bean yield.