Subscribe by email
Join 874 other subscribersMeta
Category Archives: DNA barcoding
Phylogeny of the elves illustrates why we need to sample elf DNA immediately
Last year for Christmas Eve, Dominic Evangelista reconstructed the evolutionary history of elves and elf-like fantasy creatures in a tour-de-force of nerd crossover. Seriously, go read that piece if you haven’t. It has an alternate abstract in Elvish. As with … Continue reading →
Posted in DNA barcoding, phylogenetics, primates, species delimitation
|
Tagged elves, legend, myth, orcs, pixies, things that should not have been forgotten
|
5 Comments
What do dolphins, bivalves and algae have in common?
Collaboration as it turns out, between three scientists interested in vertebrates, invertebrates and algae! A few days before we left for Evolution 2016 in Austin, one of my collaborators, Eric Pante, came to Charleston as the final stop in a North American … Continue reading →
Macroalgal miscellany
It’s been a jam-packed week and I’ve found myself at Friday. Grandiose plans for a post continuing the series on clonality (see here and here) did not come to fruition. But, I was saved with a new article that tumbled … Continue reading →
Posted in adaptation, DNA barcoding, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid, speciation
|
Tagged adaptation, Algae, freshwater, marine, speciation
|
Leave a comment
Lonesome George, no longer?
Galapagos tortoises summon up images of great, lumbering beasts on idyllic islands that planted the seeds of natural selection in the young naturalist, Charles Darwin. In a recent paper, Poulakakis et al. (2015) provide genetic evidence of two lineages of tortoises … Continue reading →
Posted in conservation, DNA barcoding, natural history, pedigree, population genetics
|
Tagged breeding, conservation, DNA, tortoises
|
Leave a comment
The scent of home
We decided to divide and conquere the west coast of North America in search of more populations of Gracilaria vermiculophylla, as if we didn’t already have enough by Midsummer’s Eve! I headed to my home state – California. I was able to sneak … Continue reading →
Posted in adaptation, DNA barcoding, evolution, haploid-diploid, natural history, phylogenetics
|
Tagged barcoding, corallines, Gracilaria, herbaria, Martone lab, sampling
|
Leave a comment
What's a Wachapreague?
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 →
Posted in blogging, DNA barcoding, haploid-diploid, population genetics
|
Tagged deep sea benthos, Gracilaria, scallops, VIMS
|
Leave a comment
Polyploidy can melt the frozen niche
The rabbit hole of asexual reproduction literature is full of weird detours in the evolution of life. There are asexual lineages that facultatively have sex, asexuals that still need sperm from other species, and asexuals that steal sperm from other species, … Continue reading →
Posted in DNA barcoding, natural history, plants
|
Tagged apomictic, niche modelling, polyploid
|
Leave a comment
Clonal conundrum, part deux
In the second installment of the clonal conundrum, one hallmark of clonality is one that surprisingly hasn’t been validated that many times using species that have both sexually and asexually reproducing populations. Theoretically, clonal reproduction should generate massive … Heterozygote excess … Continue reading →
Posted in conservation, DNA barcoding, domestication, evolution, haploid-diploid, population genetics
|
Tagged aphids, clonality, haploid-diploid, heterozygote excess, seaweed
|
Leave a comment
The brave new world of environmental genomics
A new special issue of Heredity reflects on the recent advances in environmental genomics (see other posts about eDNA here and here) and highlights the ways NGS can aid in characterizing complex biological systems. The cryptic, as well as the rare but active … Continue reading →
Posted in bioinformatics, Coevolution, DNA barcoding, evolution, genomics
|
Tagged E&R, Evolution, genomics, NGS
|
1 Comment
Haploid-diploidy, a (brief?) history
Haploid-diploid life cycles are not only good exercise for the brain, but they’re also fantastic study systems to investigate a myriad of questions. Yet, the majority of molecular studies have focused on the diploid-dominated life cycles of animal and plant … Continue reading →
Posted in DNA barcoding, domestication, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid, natural history, population genetics, selection, speciation
|
Tagged Algae, complex life cycles, ferns, fungi, haploid-diploid, mosses
|
2 Comments