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Monthly Archives: November 2014
Geophylogeny plots in R for Dummies
Amid basting my tofurky, here’s a follow-up to my previous post on quick-fix overlays of admixture plots on geographical maps in R. I recently discovered a wonderful R package called “phytools” from Liam Revell, which makes really neat phylogenetic trees (with … Continue reading
Posted in howto, phylogenetics, population genetics, R, software, STRUCTURE
Tagged data visualization, population structure
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The big chief at Molecular Ecology Resources: Interviewing Shawn Narum
What are the most exciting parts of doing science? The first look at results? The sheen of your publication finally in print? That initial foray out into the field? What about the moment you figure out a way to make a … Continue reading
Posted in interview, methods, Molecular Ecology views, science publishing
Tagged interview, methods, Molecular Ecology Resources
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Consuming raw or undercooked frogs may increase your risk of getting a rare tapeworm in your brain
A 50-year-old UK resident had been living with an unwelcome visitor for the past 4 years and it was such a headache. Surgeons from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge removed the tapeworm during a biopsy after noticing a small circular lesion … Continue reading
All in the family: hierarchical social and genetic structure in the Old World monkey Theropithecus gelada
Complex, multi-level animal societies have evolved convergently across many taxa but we know little about the mechanisms behind their formation and their associated fitness benefits. In their Molecular Ecology paper published online last week, Snyder-Mackler et al. addressed these questions … Continue reading
They'll let anything through peer review these days
… where “they” are the hordes of bogus pay-to-publish journals that seem to be spamming every .edu email address (especially those connected to corresponding authors in real journals) with invitations to submit. Submission spam from the International Journal of Advanced … Continue reading
Posted in peer review, science publishing
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The latest gadget for the molecular ecologist’s toolkit
Designing a sampling scheme to collect an organism of interest for a population genetic/genomic study can be fraught with difficulty. How best to sample? Randomly? Or, along a grid? How many individuals to sample? Thirty? Or, perhaps, the sample size … Continue reading
#EntSoc14, a quick review
I have had a wonderful time at my first big bug conference – the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Amid secretive (or not so secretive) break-out sessions to Voodoo Doughnuts, … Continue reading
Posted in conferences, genomics, phylogenetics, population genetics
Tagged arthropods, epigenetics, Evolution, phylogenetics
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New faces: Karen James
Recently we’ve been pleased to welcome a big group of new contributors to the blog. By way of introduction, I asked each of them to answer a few quick questions about him- or herself. —Jeremy Who are you? Where are … Continue reading
Posted in housekeeping, interview, introduction
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Growing the evolutionary relationship between green algae and salamanders
The presence of green algae within the developing egg masses of amphibians has been recognized since the early 1900s, but only recently have researchers discovered that the these algae (termed “Oophila”) persist in animal tissues far after leaving the egg. The … Continue reading
Posted in Coevolution, phylogenetics, speciation
Tagged Algae, Amphibians, coevolution, phylogeny
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