Author Archives: Jeremy Yoder

About Jeremy Yoder

Jeremy B. Yoder is an Associate Professor of Biology at California State University Northridge, studying the evolution and coevolution of interacting species, especially mutualists. He is a collaborator with the Joshua Tree Genome Project and the Queer in STEM study of LGBTQ experiences in scientific careers. He has written for the website of Scientific American, the LA Review of Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Awl, and Slate.

What we're reading: The diversification of bacteria, landscape genomics of cottonwood, and the skewed sex ratio of science

Posted on 31 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Plata G., C.S. Henry, and D. Vitkup. 2014. Long-term phenotypic evolution of bacteria. Nature. doi: 10.1038/nature13827. Overall, bacterial phenotypic evolution can be described by a two-stage process with a rapid initial phenotypic diversification followed by a slow … Continue reading →

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Genetics reveal the diversity of pollinators' other cargo: fungi

Posted on 28 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

The following is a cross-posting from the Stanford CEHG Blog by Jeremy Hsu, a graduate student in Elizabeth Hadley’s lab at Stanford University. Many animals that visit flowers are known to carry microfungal communities; these fungi are important ecologically because … Continue reading →

Posted in community ecology, metagenomics, microbiology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What we're reading: The color of cichlids, projected genomes, and simplifying NSF proposals

Posted on 24 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Albertson RC, KE Powder, Y Hu, KP Coyle, RB Roberts, and KJ Parsons. 2014. Genetic basis of continuous variation in the levels and modular inheritance of pigmentation in cichlid fishes. Molecular Ecology, 23: 5135–5150. doi: 10.1111/mec.12900. … … Continue reading →

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What we're reading: A meta-analysis of meta-analyses, plants' cytoplasmic genomes, and science under political attack

Posted on 17 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Koricheva, J. and J. Gurevitch. 2014. Uses and misuses of meta-analysis in plant ecology. Journal of Ecology, 102: 828–844. doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12224. We found many cases of imprecise and inaccurate usage of the term ‘meta-analysis’ in plant ecology, … Continue reading →

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What we're reading: QTLs of pine growth, climate-niche evolution, and the shape of Twitter conversations

Posted on 10 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Li Z., H.R. Hällingback, S. Abrahamsson, A Fries, B.A. Gull, M.J. Sillanpää and M.R. García-Gil. 2014. Functional multi-locus QTL mapping of temporal trends in Scots pine wood traits. G3: Genes | Genomes | Genetics. doi: 10.1534/g3.114.014068. Two … Continue reading →

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How many markers does it take to make a dataset "genomic"?

Posted on 9 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

A new paper in Ecology Letters by Matthew Fitzpatrick and Stephen Keller proposes to use some a class of statistical methods developed for understanding the distribution of species in different environments to understand the distribution of genetic variants in different … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, genomics, next generation sequencing, population genetics, software | 7 Comments

House science committee is digging for dirt in NSF's confidential records of peer review

Posted on 3 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

ScienceInsider reports that aides for the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have been spending the summer digging through records of grant the grant review process that the National Science Foundation usually keeps confidential: The Republican aides were … Continue reading →

Posted in funding, NSF, politics, United States | 1 Comment

What we're reading: Sorting out whole-genome duplication, adaptation without tradeoffs, and is science leaving its logistic growth phase?

Posted on 3 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals McGrath CL, J-F Gout, P Johri, TG Doak, and M Lynch. Differential retention and divergent resolution of duplicate genes following whole-genome duplication. 2014. Genome Res. 24: 1665-1675. doi: 10.1101/gr.173740.114. Finally, multiple sources of evidence indicate that [Paramecium] … Continue reading →

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We're looking for a few good Molecular Ecologists (UPDATED)

Posted on 2 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

Update, 6 October: Thanks to everyone who has written in to apply for a position! I’ll try to respond to your inquiries in the next day or so; we’ll continue to accept applications until next Monday, 13 October before making … Continue reading →

Posted in blogging, community | 1 Comment

What we're reading: A guide to Bioconductor, Latin American admixture, and the sordid truth about academic job hunting

Posted on 26 Sep, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

In the journals Lawrence M., M. Morgan. 2014. Scalable genomics with R and Bioconductor. arXiv:1409.2864. This paper reviews strategies for solving problems encountered when analyzing large genomic data sets and describes the implementation of those strategies in R by packages … Continue reading →

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