Author Archives: Rob Denton

How Molecular Ecologists Work: J. Chris Pires on mono-tasking, not doing it all yourself, and defining that dream job

Welcome to the next installment of the How Molecular Ecologists Work series.This entry is from Dr. J. Chris Pires, associate professor within the Division of Biological Sciences at The University of Missouri. His work is broadly described as plant evolutionary … Continue reading

Posted in career, interview | Tagged | 1 Comment

How Molecular Ecologists Work: Brant Faircloth on good headphones, one Dropbox to rule them all, and being nice

Welcome to the first installment of How Molecular Ecologists Work! This entry is from Dr. Brant Faircloth, assistant professor of computational biology at Louisiana State University. Brant’s work broadly revolves around elucidating the factors that shape biological diversity. In practice, he … Continue reading

Posted in career, interview | Tagged | 3 Comments

Introducing "How Molecular Ecologists Work"

I’ve always been fascinated by how people get all their work done. Scientists in particular make for a great study of working habits for two main reasons: they typically juggle a variety of tasks and they largely determine their own work schedules. This results … Continue reading

Posted in career, interview | Tagged | 15 Comments

Live from #Evol2016 – highlights from Monday and what to see on Tuesday June 21st

The Molecular Ecologist team is all over this year’s Evolution meeting in Austin, Texas. As part of our coverage of the meeting, we’ve been previewing presentations we’re excited about and recapping the highlights of each day here on the blog. … Continue reading

Posted in conferences | Tagged | Leave a comment

New World snakes are "mimics until proven otherwise"

Henry Walter Bates spent more than a decade living in the Amazon, having the sort of adventures that inspired generations of naturalists. His most famous and lasting contributions to natural history are his foundational descriptions of mimicry among species. The type … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, evolution, natural history, phylogenetics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Genomes on the beach: The International Conference on Polyploidy, Hybridization, and Biodiversity

I’ve spent the last week in Rovinj, Croatia at the International Conference on Polyploidy, Hybridization, and Biodiversity. I’ve been thinking (and writing) a great deal about polyploidy recently, and this meeting was certainly the impetus for much, much more of … Continue reading

Posted in community, conferences | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The slow, and sometimes incomplete, journey to diploidy

Whether you are reading this as a plant, an animal, or fungus, it is likely that some ancestor of yours doubled up on genomes. However, it is likely that these extra genomes disappeared over evolutionary time. What gives? Where are those extra … Continue reading

Posted in evolution, genomics, quantitative genetics, speciation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Molecular Ecologist Summer Meetings Round-up

Summer conferences are some of the best places to get up-to-date with your field, meet new collaborators, and hatch new ideas. The Molecular Ecologist contributors will be out in force this year, and we’d like to meet you! Below you … Continue reading

Posted in housekeeping | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Searching for heroic MHC genes in the fight against fungal takeover

Frogs have been disappearing all around the world in the past few decades. The reasons for these declines have been complex, but one of the biggest players is a nasty disease with an even nastier-sounding name: chytridiomycosis. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is the … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, selection | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

To find duplicated loci in vertebrate polyploids, try thinking small

Big sequencing efforts have gone a long way to help understand the complexities of polyploidy. However, the bioinformatic approaches to sorting and scoring alleles in next-gen data are generally designed for easy of use in diploid species. Unlike a diploid species, where … Continue reading

Posted in genomics, methods, next generation sequencing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 3 Comments