What we're reading: Coelocanth genomics, barcoded pollen, and publication priorities

BookshelfAs we head into the weekend, here’s a few things we’ve noticed that might be worth your screen-time.
In the journals
Amemiya, C.T., Alföldi, J., Lee, A.P., Fan, S., Philippe, H., MacCallum, I., et al. 2013. The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution. Nature 496: 311–316. doi: 10.1038/nature12027.

Coelacanth protein-coding genes are significantly more slowly evolving than those of tetrapods, unlike other genomic features.

Parducci, L., Matetovici, I., Fontana, S.L., Bennett, K.D., Suyama, Y., Haile, J., et al. 2013. Molecular- and pollen-based vegetation analysis in lake sediments from central Scandinavia. Molecular Ecology doi: 10.1111/mec.12298.

Here, we compared pollen-based and metabar- coding approaches to explore the Holocene plant composition around two lakes in cen- tral Scandinavia. At one site, we also compared barcoding results with those obtained in earlier studies with species-specific primers.

In the news
We should all have such a problem: how do you decide what papers to publish first?
Is science’s image problem really a careers problem?
Shameless self-promotion: Jeremy reviews a new book on scientific teaching.
More on E.O. Wilson: maybe the real problem is that he doesn’t understand how collaboration works.

About Jeremy Yoder

Jeremy B. Yoder is an Associate Professor of Biology at California State University Northridge, studying the evolution and coevolution of interacting species, especially mutualists. He is a collaborator with the Joshua Tree Genome Project and the Queer in STEM study of LGBTQ experiences in scientific careers. He has written for the website of Scientific American, the LA Review of Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Awl, and Slate.
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