What we're reading: Population genetics of an invasive vine, demography and GWAS,

Book
In the journals
Campitelli, B. E., and J. R. Stinchcombe. 2014. Population dynamics and evolutionary history of the weedy vine Ipomoea hederacea in North America. G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics, doi: 10.1534/g3.114.011700.

We further found significant genetic differentiation at sequenced loci, but nearly 4-fold stronger differentiation at the leaf shape locus, strengthening evidence that the leaf shape locus is under divergent selection.

Lohmueller, K. E. 2014. The impact of population demography and selection on the genetic architecture of complex traits. PLOS Genetics. 10:e1004379. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004379.

Under a model where a mutation’s effect on a trait is correlated with its effect on fitness, rare variants explain a greater portion of the additive genetic variance of the trait in a population that has recently expanded than in a population that did not recently expand.

In the news
“I would argue then that the need to strive for top-tier non-OA journals is greatest for research-active faculty at institutions that are actually most harmed by predatory scientific publishing structures (see the list above).”
How to write the introduction to an ecology (or any scientific) paper: a flowchart.
“Two months after the implementation of the PLOS journals’ data policy, what have we learned from our authors, reviewers, editors, correspondents, and commenters in the blogosphere?”
Stop wasting your time writing faculty job application packages and just plug your publication stats into this regression-based widget to calculate the odds you’ll become a PI. (But see also.)

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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