Monthly Archives: May 2014

What we're reading: The evolution of brains versus brawn, ring species genomics, and the deadly fifth stage of publishing

Posted on 30 May, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Bozek K, Wei Y, Yan Z, Liu X, Xiong J, et al. 2014. Exceptional evolutionary divergence of human muscle and brain metabolomes parallels human cognitive and physical uniqueness. PLoS Biology 12(5): e1001871. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001871. We found that … Continue reading →

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How A Troublesome Inheritance gets human genetics wrong

Posted on 29 May, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

Probably since before the origin of modern Homo sapiens, we have known that people from other places—the next village over, the other side of the mountains, or some distant and unexplored land—were different from us. Some of those differences were … Continue reading →

Posted in book review, genomics, population genetics | Tagged , , | 19 Comments

Mol Ecol's best reviewers 2014

Posted on 27 May, 2014 by Tim Vines

As a continuation of our post from last year, Molecular Ecology is publishing a list of our very best referees from the last two years (2012 and 2013). Our hope is that the people listed below will put ‘Top Reviewer … Continue reading →

Posted in community, Molecular Ecology, the journal, peer review | 3 Comments

What we're reading: The vital importance of mosquitoes' gut microbes, an app for classroom genetics, and how to fish for p-values without really trying

Posted on 23 May, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Coon, K. L., K. J. Vogel, M. R. Brown, and M. R. Strand. 2014. Mosquitoes rely on their gut microbiota for development. Molecular Ecology. 2727–2739. doi: 10.1111/mec.12771. Functional assays showed that axenic larvae of each species failed … Continue reading →

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Calculating genetic differentiation with R

Posted on 20 May, 2014 by Mark Christie

As molecular ecologists, it is often necessary and useful to calculate some measure of genetic differentiation. This is often accomplished with metrics such as Wright’s Fst an or an unbiased analog (e.g., Weir & Cockerham’s Fst; G’st etc.). In addition … Continue reading →

Posted in population genetics, R, software | 13 Comments

What we're reading: Dealing with missing sequence data, SNP2GO, and the challenge of replication in bad results

Posted on 9 May, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Ferretti, L., E. Raineri, and S. Ramos-Onsins. 2012. Neutrality tests for sequences with missing data. Genetics 191:1397–401. doi: 10.1534/genetics.112.139949. At present, most packages for population genetics analyses like DNAsp (Librado and Rozas 2009) deal with missing data … Continue reading →

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Selection keeps an extra-close eye on multi-functional genes

Posted on 6 May, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

Genes that have roles in multiple traits—pleiotropic genes—have long been thought to be under stronger selection as a result of those multiple functions. The basic logic is that, when a gene produces a protein that has a lot of different … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, genomics, quantitative genetics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

What we're reading: The Y chromosome, climate change versus forests, and a postdoc's job description

Posted on 2 May, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Cortez, D., R. Marin, D. Toledo-Flores, L. Froidevaux, A. Liechti, P. D. Waters, F. Grützner, and H. Kaessmann. 2014. Origins and functional evolution of Y chromosomes across mammals. Nature 508:488–93. doi: 10.1038/nature13151. Despite expression decreases in therians, … Continue reading →

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