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Monthly Archives: January 2015
From crocodiles to coconuts
The first plant trypanosomatids were discovered in plant tissues over 100 years ago, but we know very little about their biology, life cycle or how they have adapted to life inside plants. Jaskowska et al. (2015) provide a review of … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, natural history
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Discordance in ancestry inference using human mtDNA and autosomes
Mitochondrial haplotypes have been used extensively over the last few decades for inference of a population structure in humans. Key findings from these studies include what has come to be known as the “Mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis (see the controversial Cann, … Continue reading
Estimating the ticks and tocks of molecular clocks
Like many undergraduate students, I learned about the linear, universal molecular clock: the homogeneous rate of nucleotide change over time. When I sat down to actually do analyses of molecular data, I was confounded by the array of options to treat DNA … Continue reading
Posted in evolution, Molecular Ecology, the journal, mutation, software
Tagged molecular clock
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The microbiome doesn't always explain everything.
Microbiome research is sexy. Just look at the Google Trends graph. Anyone and everyone is studying the gut, nasal, vaginal, skin, oral, aural, any-other-body-part microbiome. This means that a lot of research is getting published saying what constitutes a “healthy” … Continue reading
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Incorporating phenotype and genotype in model-based species delimitation
Species are the fundamental unit of biology but identifying them is a challenging task that receives a lot of theoretical and empirical attention. In a recent Evolution paper, Solís‐Lemus et al. (2015) introduce a new model-based method that integrates phenotypic and genetic data … Continue reading
Posted in methods, speciation, species delimitation, theory
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The paludicolous life: peatmosses and pH
High dispersal should counteract local adaptation by continuously redistributing genetic variability. In the bryophyte Sphagnum warnstorfii, the North Atlantic may not be as formidable a barrier as expected. Spores may traverse the Atlantic Ocean to North America from Europe and vice … Continue reading
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LaTeX hacks to save your life (and your co-authors')
In light of this recent study by Knauff and Nejasmic (2014) that makes a lot of presumptive leaps on the utility and effectiveness of in scientific writing, my case for the utility of for every equation, reference, table, figure, and … Continue reading
The imitation game: simulating the genetics of large populations
Computational simulations of genetic data are such a powerful and flexible tool for carrying out studies in molecular ecology. Do you want to know how much explanatory power your data provides? Simulate it! Predict the future response of species to … Continue reading
Nature versus nurture in the human immune system
An organism’s phenotype is the result of its genotype and its environment. Teasing apart the relative importance of these factors in determining phenotype is a difficult task. However, monozygotic (i.e. identical) twins offer a natural experiment to test the contributions of genes … Continue reading
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