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Monthly Archives: September 2015
Paternity matters in polyploid plants
In the most basic definition, polyploidy is a numerical increase in whole chromosome number. The effects of this increase in genomic material often produce novel morphologies compared to parental species, and polyploids have become both a huge part of explaining the … Continue reading
Algae bring life to the world – marine forests and domestication
The final two days of the European Phycological Congress included talks focused on the fate of marine forests in light of global climate change as well as other anthropogenic stressors, such as domestication.
Algae bring life to the world – species, microbiomes and biodiversity
The first European Phycological Congress was held in Cologne, Germany in 1996. In the last 20-odd years, the meeting has been held every four years from Italy, to Northern Ireland, to Spain and Greece. This year the meeting was held … Continue reading
Measuring dispersal rate in Neotropical fishes in units of 'wallace'
Alfred Russel Wallace often gets second billing compared to Charles Darwin but in a paper recently accepted at Systematic Biology, Tagliacollo et al. define a new term for their analyses (dispersal rate, D) and measure D in units of ‘wallaces‘ (wa) to honor the contributions of Alfred … Continue reading
Posted in methods, phylogenetics, phylogeography, Uncategorized
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Sweptaway – Part 3 – Adaptation genomics of White Sands Lizards
Recent colonization events offer juicy insights into the adaptive evolution of species in response to natural selection of novel habitats – however, they are confounded by demographic changes (eg. bottlenecks, differential migration). In a recent study, Laurent et al. (2015) … Continue reading
Landscape genetics shows that Tanzanian forest monkeys feel the heat of human influence
A new publication appearing in Heredity applies new methods for associating population genetic data with landscape resistance to an tropical, endangered species. The authors utilize multiple measurements of landscape resistance, like forest cover and distance from the nearest village, to select the … Continue reading
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Best laid plans are probably not best laid … As I mentioned before, I had every intention of writing up posts on interesting papers as well as highlighting the hosts gracious enough to house/feed/guide us around this summer. Alas, time … Continue reading
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Sweptaway – Part 2
Numerous methods have been developed over the last few years for the detection of selective sweeps (hard and soft – see my previous post). This week, we look at three new studies that (a) compare existing methods to detect sweeps … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, methods, population genetics, selection, software, theory
Tagged genomics, methods, natural selection, population structure
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Small mammalian genomics of adaptation
While large mammals have had their day on our blog, two recent studies on small mammals reveal the genetics of size evolution in island mice, and differential introgression of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes in chipmunks – steps towards understanding the … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, domestication, evolution, genomics, natural history, pedigree, phylogenetics, population genetics, selection
Tagged Evolution, gene flow, genomics, natural selection
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