What we're reading: Frequency-dependent selection on mitochondria, divergence versus admixture mapping, and the PubMed Commons

Read a book
In the journals
E Kazancıoğlu, Arnqvist G. 2013. The maintenance of mitochondrial genetic variation by negative frequency-dependent selection. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12195.

We assessed the change in mitochondrial haplotype frequencies over 10 generations of experimental evolution in 180 seed beetle populations in the laboratory … We found that haplotypes consistently increased in frequency when they were initially rare and decreased in frequency when initially common.

JE Crawford, Nielsen R. 2013. Detecting adaptive trait loci in non-model systems: divergence or admixture mapping? Molecular Ecology. doi: 10.1111/mec.12562.

Divergence scans of genetic markers for outlier loci, or ‘divergence mapping’, have been used to map locally adapted genes, but this approach is likely to be underpowered when background divergence is elevated. Genotype-phenotype association tests in admixed populations, or ‘admixture mapping’, may provide a useful approach for mapping locally adapted loci when neutral divergence is high.

In the news
Is biology’s future in the computer lab?
The Economist goes off the rails on science’s self-correction.
PubMed is putting a comments section below every article in the archive—and it’s open, to begin, to anyone who’s received funds from NIH or Wellcome Trust.

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.
This entry was posted in linkfest. Bookmark the permalink.