Author Archives: Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Simple tools for mastering color in scientific figures

Call me a procrastinator but I strongly believe that spending time to select a good color scheme can work miracles with a plot, paper, or presentation. In science, it’s generally not expected that you invest time into a thought process … Continue reading

Posted in howto, methods, Science Communication, science publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to handle the burden of deleterious mutations

With the increasingly pressing matter of populations being threatened by fragmentation and isolation, and with progressively more efficient sequencing technologies and analytical tools at hand, conservation genetics is starting to turn the spotlight on the topic of genetic load. It … Continue reading

Posted in conservation, demography, ecology, evolution, genomics, mammals, population genetics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The world through the senses of a pangolin

This Saturday, February 15, is World Pangolin Day, and thus it is a good time to do some PR for these fascinating animals. Continue reading

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How island foxes are living on the edge

Back in 2016, Robinson et al. (2016) published a genomic analyses of the Channel Island foxes and they showed that despite extremely low genome-wide diversity, the island foxes do not seem to be suffering from inbreeding depression. Read the post … Continue reading

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Is the neutral theory dead?

You might have noticed how the world of genetics was shaking as the giants of theoretical population genetics started discussing some of the most fundamental questions in the arena of Twittersphere. This happened after the publication of Andrew Kern and Matthew … Continue reading

Posted in evolution, mutation, population genetics, selection, theory | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Genomic signatures of ancient rendezvous and separation in elephant evolution

Evidence from various levels of the tree of life is showing that we’ve been picturing ancient encounters between related species all wrong and admixture events are probably more common than expected. Even rendezvous among primates, caniforms, and majestic proboscideans often … Continue reading

Posted in conservation, evolution, genomics, hybridization, natural history, Paleogenomics, phylogeography | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

(Un)usual sources of ancient DNA

Working with ancient DNA can be quite painful at times, but hard work pays off (or so they say) and scientists are starting to reap great benefits from their effort by exploring more and more things to extract DNA from.

Posted in evolution, genomics, methods, Paleogenomics | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Hype Cycle of Ancient DNA

Recently I saw a graph that I’ve learnt is called the Hype Cycle and is a methodology used in assessment of new technologies and their marketing. What strikes me about it is how well it fits my own research field, … Continue reading

Posted in evolution, natural history, Paleogenomics, phylogenetics, population genetics, theory | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

What's left of the black rhino's genetic diversity?

With the current poaching epidemic we might lose rhinos before we even have time to get to know them. Luckily, the day has come and thanks to Yoshan Moodley, Mike Bruford and their team we know have a pretty good … Continue reading

Posted in conservation, evolution, Paleogenomics, phylogeography, population genetics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Diving into the inbreeding depression

This post is going to be a little melodramatic, but I hope that despite all the reading on inbreeding depression, you won’t get depressed. As the media finally started feeding us all the catastrophic news about the impact of global … Continue reading

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