Monthly Archives: December 2014

Not everyone likes it hot … winter or not

Posted on 26 Dec, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

On this Boxing Day, many of us may be bracing against winter storms.  For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we might all be dreaming of summer weather (including those of us who think a Southern Californian version of winter downright … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, natural history | Leave a comment

The best of TME (for the last two months)

Posted on 24 Dec, 2014 by Rob Denton

I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for year-end lists. Ten biggest science discoveries. Fifty best albums of 2014. They make fantastic procrastination fodder, and I’ll comb through each one that crosses my desktop before the New Year. In the same spirit, … Continue reading →

Posted in blogging, community | 1 Comment

Rejection, Academics, and Success.

Posted on 23 Dec, 2014 by Noah Snyder-Mackler

With the holiday season in full swing, I thought that I share a link to a recent post on weathering the rejection storm that almost invariably accompanies grant and publication reviews. those of you getting rejections are in great company. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

haploidy, diploidy, polyploidy … not a problem

Posted on 19 Dec, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Investigating pairwise relatedness is fundamental to the characterization of the mating system and inferring genetic structure. If no pedigree exists, then relatedness is estimated from genetic markers (e.g., microsatellite loci) using method-of-moment or maximum-likelihood methods. However, not all individuals in … Continue reading →

Posted in natural history, pedigree, population genetics, software, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Sweeping for Sweeps

Posted on 18 Dec, 2014 by Arun Sethuraman

Reduction in genomic diversity around a site has been attributed to one of two mechanisms – (1) sites linked to positively selected mutant alleles are often `swept’ to fixation, in a process often called genetic hitchhiking, and/or (2) background selection … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

A molecular how-to for hibernating this winter

Posted on 17 Dec, 2014 by Rob Denton

As the academic semester ends, I see the tell-tale signs of the upcoming holiday hibernation. The weary eyes of teaching assistants peeking over piles of final exams. Students who may have mentally been on break before finals even started. A little … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, Molecular Ecology, the journal, quantitative genetics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

This post is for the birds

Posted on 16 Dec, 2014 by Noah Snyder-Mackler

Note: this post was has been corrected to reflect the fact that Flamingoes and Pigeons are not sister species, but members of sister clades. Darwin’s favorite bird, the pigeon, has a new sister (clade) that includes Flamingoes and Grebes. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

LSUMNS researchers are at the top of the list for new species discoveries in 2014

Posted on 15 Dec, 2014 by Melissa DeBiasse

2014 was an exciting year for describing new biodiversity for researchers at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science (LSUMNS). Top ten lists are ubiquitous this time of year and two such lists documenting the top new species of 2014 … Continue reading →

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Totally RAD

Posted on 12 Dec, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Puritz et al. (2014) weigh the pros and cons of, the aptly titled, “RAD fad” in a comment recently published online in Molecular Ecology. They challenge: (1) the assertion that the original RAD protocol minimizes the impact of PCR artifacts … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, methods, next generation sequencing, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Migration Circos plots in R

Posted on 11 Dec, 2014 by Arun Sethuraman

We’ve all seen them – colorful, and I daresay, pretty darn informative. Circos plots are fun visualizations of large data-sets. I’ve seen them used in two contexts in comparative genomics – to represent structural variants in homologous chromosome segments in … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, howto, R, software | Tagged , | 11 Comments