Monthly Archives: November 2015

We're looking for a few (more) good molecular ecologists

Posted on 30 Nov, 2015 by Jeremy Yoder

The Molecular Ecologist has big plans for 2016, and we’re seeking new regular contributors to help make them reality. We seek contributors with expertise and experience in our core topic, the use of genetic data to understand the past and … Continue reading →

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Bees brought to their knees

Posted on 27 Nov, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

As regular readers of TME will have read, this past summer was a whirlwind of sampling in which I took the briefest of holidays in the Southwest of England before attending the European Phycological Congress (read about the congress here and here). … Continue reading →

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Workshop: Gene Conservation of Tree Species

Posted on 23 Nov, 2015 by Jeremy Yoder

From friend-of-the-blog Sean Hoban, an update about a workshop that should be of interest to molecular ecologists: A reminder, the deadline to submit abstracts for the “Gene Conservation of Tree Species – Banking on the Future” conference, to be held … Continue reading →

Posted in community, conferences, conservation, genomics, plants | Tagged | Leave a comment

Anti-predatory adaptations in sticklebacks and butterflies

Posted on 23 Nov, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Two recent studies analyze character shifts in response to different selection regimes – (1) Mullerian mimicry wing patterns in Heliconius butterflies, and (2) anti-intraguild-predator adaptations in armor and shape of threespine sticklebacks. Hoyal Cuthill and Charleston 2015 Wing patterning genes … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, natural history, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, speciation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What's a Wachapreague?

Posted on 20 Nov, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Heading north to Virginia (and our base of operations at the VIMS Eastern Shore Lab, ESL) was one of the easiest, in terms of travel and packing. Though maybe not the coolest ride around, a minivan doesn’t have 50 lb … Continue reading →

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Large predators, large data, large conservation issues

Posted on 18 Nov, 2015 by Rob Denton

We are a diverse group here at The Molecular Ecologist. Melissa writes love letters to sponges. Stacy takes you on exotic kelp road trips. Arun gives you another excuse to spend the afternoon playing with R. I feel that it is … Continue reading →

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Keeping up with the kelps

Posted on 13 Nov, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

After we returned from Japan, we embarked on sampling both coasts of North America (but more on that soon!) and Europe. July, August and September blurred together, punctuated by lugging heavy bags weighed down with silica gel and bad airline food. … Continue reading →

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Clinal genomic variation in Drosophila species

Posted on 12 Nov, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Two recent manuscripts describe adaptive evolutions to clinal/latitudinal variations in Drosophila species to supplement a growing wealth of recent studies on geographic variation and adaptive evolution in natural populations of fruitflies (eg. see Kao et al. 2015, Zhao et al. … Continue reading →

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2D Posterior Density Plots in R

Posted on 6 Nov, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

I have been grappling with visualizing two dimensional histograms of posterior density distributions of parameters, as estimated by one of your favorite programs – IMa2, MIGRATE-n, MSVAR, etc. All these programs print out distributions of estimated parameters, and here’s a … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, howto, population genetics, R, software | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

On getting empirical with the obvious

Posted on 4 Nov, 2015 by Rob Denton

I’ve been thinking lately about the value in doing “simple” things. As a PhD student, my time is constantly incentivised by productivity (what am I doing right now that is working towards a publication?). But that doesn’t jive well with … Continue reading →

Posted in population genetics, theory, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment