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Author Archives: Katie Everson
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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Video Tutorial: editing R plots in Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool for creating and editing figures; unfortunately, it’s also really intimidating. So today at The Molecular Ecologist we’re trying something a little different: a screen-capture video tutorial about using Adobe Illustrator to enhance and edit plots … Continue reading
Posted in howto, R
Tagged Adobe, Figures, how to, Illustrator, Plots, R, Screen Capture, Tutorial, Video
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Phenotypes in Comparative Phylogeography
Earlier this week, The Molecular Ecologist contributor Bryan McLean posted about the current state of comparative phylogeography (Riddle 2016). He listed several exciting directions that comparative phylogeography is heading, including more research that includes trait data. As a followup to … Continue reading
Highlights from the 2016 Mammal Meeting
The American Society of Mammalogists’ annual meeting just wrapped up in beautiful Minneapolis, Minnesota. There were so many great talks and poster presentations that unfortunately I’m not able to highlight them all, but here are a few of my favorites! Empirical … Continue reading
Posted in conferences
Tagged american society of mammalogists, conferences, mammals, meetings
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10 simple rules for designing a scientific poster
Conference season is upon us! Around the world, thousands of scientists face a daunting task: designing a scientific poster. It should be sleek, yet informative; eye-catching, yet professional; and most of all it should attract the attention of your future … Continue reading
A new (quantitative!) method for comparative phylogeography
Comparative phylogeographic studies usually involve a) documenting a phylogeographic pattern and b) recognizing that the same pattern is congruent in multiple species. But what if species histories are only sortof congruent? Perhaps they share one major splitting event but not later … Continue reading
Posted in Coevolution, phylogeography, plants, software
Tagged comparative phylogeography, concordance factors
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Using R to mine species data
Many of us generate more data than we know what to do with (speaking of which: keep an eye out for the 2016 NGS Field Guide, coming soon!), so it’s easy to forget about the piles of data already at our fingertips. Research potential is … Continue reading
Battle of the Text Editors
Whether you’re a coding master or a total technophobe, a good text editor is a must-have for the molecular ecology toolkit. Text editors are great for managing code, formatting input files, or jotting notes. But with so many different text … Continue reading
3 writing mistakes I make
Last week my university hosted Dr. Joshua Schimel, microbiologist and author of Writing Science, who led a half-day writing workshop for graduate students. To be honest, I didn’t expect my writing to improve after a 4-hour workshop, but I learned a … Continue reading
How the White Sands lizards lost their stripes
In molecular ecology, most of us work with study systems that are messy, uncooperative, or just plain difficult (note the fecal samples incubating on my lab bench). What I wouldn’t give for a nice, elegant study system — like the … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, genomics, population genetics, selection
Tagged coloration, lizards, selective sweep, White Sands
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