Monthly Archives: February 2014

What we're reading: Sex and the single endogenous retrovirus, extinction by hybridization, and the PLOS data-sharing policy

Posted on 28 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Jalasvuori M & J Lehtonen. 2014. Virus epidemics can lead to a population-wide spread of intragenomic parasites in a previously parasite-free asexual population. Molecular Ecology. 23(5):987–991. doi: 10.1111/mec.12662. Endogenous retroviruses are retroviruses that have integrated to the … Continue reading →

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What's more isolating—environmental distance or … plain old distance?

Posted on 26 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

We molecular ecologists spend a lot of time thinking about how we can differentiate the effects of natural selection acting on populations in different environments—local adaptation—from the simple isolating effects of, well, being in different places—isolation-by-distance. There’s a considerable literature … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, population genetics | 1 Comment

What we're reading: estimating relatedness and inbreeding, the evolution of influenza, and a new spin on p-values

Posted on 21 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Wang J. 2014. Marker-based estimates of relatedness and inbreeding coefficients: an assessment of current methods. J. Evol. Biol. 27:518–530. doi: 10.1111/jeb.12315. … F and r estimates can be misleading and become biased and marker dependent when a … Continue reading →

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What we're reading: Phylogenetic analyses of diversification, how HIV crosses fitness valleys, and gorgeous science visualizations

Posted on 14 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Morlon, H. 2014. Phylogenetic approaches for studying diversification. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12251. A major challenge ahead is to develop models that more explicitly take into account ecology, in particular the interaction of species with each other and … Continue reading →

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The "sieve" of selection—and of scientific discovery

Posted on 12 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

One of the many fundamental insights to come out of the early days of population genetics in the first decades of the 20th Century was J.B.S. Haldane’s discovery that, when it comes to natural selection, population size matters. As Haldane … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, population genetics | 2 Comments

What we're reading: Arabidopsis and global warming, the species tree of chickadees, and Open Science's profit motive

Posted on 7 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Li Y, R Cheng, KA Spokas, AA Palmer, and JO Borevitz. 2014. Genetic Variation for Life History Sensitivity to Seasonal Warming in Arabidopsis thaliana. Genetics 196:569-77. doi: 10.1534/genetics.113.157628. The identified genetic architecture allowed accurate prediction of flowering … Continue reading →

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On “triangulation” in genome scans

Posted on 4 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

Guest contributor K.E. Lotterhos is a marine biologist at Wake Forest University, who studies evolutionary responses to fishing and climate change. You can find her on Twitter under the handle @dr_k_lo. A major goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the genetic … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, genomics, methods, population genetics, quantitative genetics | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments