Category Archives: pedigree

A Highlight of Molecular Ecology outside of Academia

I’ve recently made a career change. Actually, I’m not even sure whether to call it that, or the next step of a natural, if meandering progression of a scientist not on the academic career path. Even though I see more and … Continue reading

Posted in career, conservation, ecology, funding, pedigree, population genetics, quantitative genetics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Population genomics in the "melting pot"

North America is full of new arrivals. Europeans colonized the continent starting half a millennium ago, displaced and eradicated native populations, and brought enslaved workers from Africa with them — and further immigrants have followed ever since. This mass movement … Continue reading

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For these birds, isolation-by-distance is (almost) all in the family

Isolation by distance is one of the most fundamental processes of molecular ecology. In any finite population, the frequency of a genetic variant will change from generation to generation due to random sampling effects, which we call genetic drift. In … Continue reading

Posted in natural history, pedigree, population genetics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Genomics of Hybridization – Part 1

In a series of articles, I will discuss recent advances in hybridization genomics – the fundamentals of adaptive introgression, “islands of speciation”, differential gene flow, and linked selection have been discussed in my previous posts (here, here, and also at … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, methods, natural history, next generation sequencing, pedigree, phylogenetics, plants, population genetics, RNAseq, software, speciation, species delimitation, STRUCTURE, theory, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , , , | 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

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Large predators, large data, large conservation issues

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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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

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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 , , , | Leave a comment

Quantifying risks of consanguineous mating in humans

The efficacy of selection in purging a deleterious mutation from a randomly mating population depends on numerous factors, including dominance effects of alleles – see my previous posts. Simplistically, most new mutations are expected to be heterozygotic, and be purged … Continue reading

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Live fast and reproduce young

Here is one for the “simple, elegant science” folder: a new paper in PNAS by Julia Schroeder and colleagues that demonstrates a fitness disadvantage in offspring from older parents. While there a multitude of papers out there showing that gametes have … Continue reading

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