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Category Archives: speciation
The genomic architecture of ecological speciation
Speciation reshapes the ways genetic diversity is distributed in the genome — it’s been said that the establishment of reproductive isolation is essentially the evolution of genome-wide linkage disequilibrium. The “genomic islands of speciation” model of ecological isolation imagines genome-wide … Continue reading
Posted in association genetics, linkage mapping, selection, speciation
Tagged Rhagoletis pomonella
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Polyploidy in the era of GBS
Ploidy, dear reader, is something that I think about literally all the time. It impacts every facet of my research from the field to the bench to the stats used to analyze data sets. It’s been simultaneously the greatest and the … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid, Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, plants, speciation
Tagged GBS, Heterozygosity, microsatellites, polyploidy, SNPs
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An Update on the Great BAMM Controversy
Update, 01 August 2016, 2:50PM. This post has been updated to include information contained in the supplemental material of Rabosky et al. 2017, and clarify the difference between branch-specific and tree-wide rate variation. Back in August, I summarized the main … Continue reading
Posted in blogging, evolution, methods, phylogenetics, science publishing, software, speciation
Tagged BAMM, diversification, extinction, macroevolution
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False detection of "true" species under the multi-species coalescent model
The multi-species coalescent model (MSCM) is the biggest name in the game (if the game is genetic species delimitation). But a new paper from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asks: is the MSCM really doing what we think it’s doing? Some … Continue reading
Posted in software, speciation
Tagged BPP, modeling, multi-species coalescent, software, speciation, species delimitation
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The seeds of speciation
You don’t have to get very far into an evolution textbook before you bump into Darwin’s finches, the birds descended from South American finches that colonized the Galapagos Islands and “radiated” into an array of different species, each with a … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, birds, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, population genetics, speciation
Tagged crossbill, lodgepole pine
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Free to go but required to stay: contrasting views on mitochondrial relationships
Ever since a bacterium found itself mysteriously engulfed in our eukaryotic ancestor, things have been, uh, complicated regarding our two genomes. One is big, one is small. One is circular, one is linear. One is numerous in each cell, the … Continue reading
Highlights from the Standalone Society of Systematic Biologists meeting – part 1
The 2017 standalone meeting of the Society of Systematic Biologists included expert-led debates on major issues in molecular systematics. Didn’t make it to Baton Rouge? Don’t worry – Bryan McLean and I report on the main points below, and highlight some of our … Continue reading
Posted in phylogenetics, species delimitation, Uncategorized
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Still ruffling feathers after all these years: Darwin's finches and a molecular view of adaptive radiation
One of the many lovely things about molecular ecology is its ability to shine new light on old stories. The well-known case of Darwin’s finches is a classic example of adaptive radiation. These finches demonstrate a clear instance where over time, … Continue reading