Monthly Archives: April 2015

dN(eutralist) < dS(electionist) Part 5

Posted on 16 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

The neutral theory predicts that species with small census (and effective) population sizes are subject to greater drift (or allele frequency fluctuations), and vice versa. In other words, species with larger population sizes are expected to maintain more neutral diversity … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, mutation, natural history, plants, population genetics, theory | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Migration on the brain

Posted on 15 Apr, 2015 by Rob Denton

If you’ve watched any number of nature shows in your lifetime, you’ve seen the astounding migrations made by salmonid fishes. You can count on seeing a shot of salmon darting against the current and catapulting themselves over turbulent falls (like … Continue reading →

Posted in Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, RNAseq, transcriptomics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The gopher tortoise gut microbiome

Posted on 14 Apr, 2015 by Noah Snyder-Mackler

A few weeks ago I wrote about a study on socially structured gut microbiomes in wild baboons. Well, now I’m here to tell you about a new study that examined the population structure of tortoise gut microbiomes.

Posted in community ecology, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, population genetics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Plastic and evolved responses to host fruit in apple maggot flies

Posted on 13 Apr, 2015 by Melissa DeBiasse

The apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, is a prominent system for the study of sympatric speciation. Sister taxa in the R. pomonella species complex, the apple-infesting race of R. pomonella and the snowberry-infesting R. zephyria, have sympatric distributions and the fruiting time of their preferred hosts widely overlaps. … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, speciation, transcriptomics | Leave a comment

Gorillas (genomes) in the mist

Posted on 10 Apr, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Mountain gorillas are an endangered great ape subspecies that number around 800 individuals, inhabiting mountain ranges in central Africa. They have been the subject of numerous field studies, but few genetic analyses have been carried out. Xue et al. (2015) sequenced … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, conservation, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, primates | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Visualizing Linkage Disequilibrium in R

Posted on 9 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Patterns of Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) across a genome has multiple implications for a population’s ancestral demography. For instance, population bottlenecks predictably result in increased LD, LD between SNP’s in loci under natural selection affect each others rates of adaptive evolution, selfing/inbreeding populations … Continue reading →

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

Don't trust your data: reviewing Bioinformatics Data Skills

Posted on 8 Apr, 2015 by Rob Denton

The Molecular Ecologist receives a small commission for purchases made on Bookshop.org via links from this post. There is little debate on the importance of bioinformatics for the present and future of science. As molecular ecologists, we are likely more aware of this … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, book review, genomics, software | Tagged | 2 Comments

A call for statistical editors in ecology

Posted on 7 Apr, 2015 by Noah Snyder-Mackler

A new article in TREE wants to add a specialized reviewer to the peer review process. von Wehrden, Schultner, and Abson suggest that a statistical editor would expedite* the peer review process: “The review process of a manuscript with imperfect … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Molecular Ecology's best reviewers 2015

Posted on 7 Apr, 2015 by Tim Vines

(Flickr: Kathrin & Stefan Marks) As a continuation of our post from last year, Molecular Ecology is publishing a list of our very best referees from the last two years (2013 and 2014). Our hope is that the people listed … Continue reading →

Posted in housekeeping, Molecular Ecology, the journal, peer review, science publishing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A transcriptomic approach for reduced representation in population genomics

Posted on 6 Apr, 2015 by Melissa DeBiasse

                    Many population genomics studies use methods that provide a reduced representation of the genome, for example RADseq or UCEs. Targeting a subset of the genome reduces the cost of sequencing … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, howto, methods, Molecular Ecology, the journal, next generation sequencing, RNAseq | Leave a comment