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Monthly Archives: March 2015
How (not) to review papers on inclusive fitness
There are few evolutionary concepts as polarizing as Hamilton’s rule. Some researchers feel that there is no mathematical grounding for it, while others beg to differ. Yet empirical evidence in support of Hamilton’s rule is scarce (but check out this … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, population genetics, societal structure, theory
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l'oliva di mare: disturbance and genetic diversity
Seagrasses are important ecosystem-engineers of coastal regions around the world. Previous work has demonstrated the correlation of high genotypic diversity with resistance (e.g., Hughes and Stachowicz 2004) and resilience (e.g., Reusch et al. 2005). In a recently accepted paper in Molecular Ecology, Jahnke, … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, community ecology, conservation, natural history, plants
Tagged connectivity, disturbance, genetic diversity, seagrasses
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F-statistics Manhattan Plots in R
Characterizing differentiation across individual genomes sampled from different populations can be very informative of the demographic processes that resulted in the differentiation in the first place. Manhattan plots have grown to be very popular representations of genome-wide differentiation statistics in … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, howto, population genetics, R, software
Tagged data visualization, genomics, Homo sapiens
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Killer genetic differentiation
Like most of you out there, I sometimes get bogged down in literature, and the pressure to keep up with new methods can lead to a towering “to-read” folder. I feel forced to read many of these papers no matter … Continue reading
Panamanian golden frog skin microbiota predict ability to clear deadly infection
The fungal skin infection, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has pushed many amphibian species to the brink of extinction. One such species, the Panamanian golden frog, is likely extinct in the wild and has been maintained in captive breeding colonies since 2006. … Continue reading
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A love letter to sponges
Like many kids interested in marine biology, growing up I wanted to work on sharks. After college I interned for a year at the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Lab under the guidance of two great mentors, Jim Gelsleichter and … Continue reading
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British fineSTRUCTURE
Leslie et al. (2015) provide an analysis of genome-wide SNP data from over 2,000 individuals in the United Kingdom in a paper out this week in Nature. The population structure in the UK was limited with FST estimates averaged 0.0007, with a … Continue reading
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dN(eutralist) = dS(electionist) Part 3
In a previous post, I discussed the phenomenon of background selection, which results in rapid expungement of neutral alleles linked to loci under purifying or negative selection, and conversely, the rapid fixation of neutral variants that are linked to loci of … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, natural history, plants, population genetics, selection
Tagged genomics, population genetics
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Reviewing the reviews: Twelve years of Landscape Genetics
Landscape genetics has grown feverishly since its first formal definition in 2003 (Manel et al). The beauty of combining genetic, environmental, and spatial variation to answer biological questions sure is alluring, and the quest for improving the methodology of landscape … Continue reading