Category Archives: community ecology

Loki and behold: one microbial culture that brings us one leap closer to understanding the origins of eukaryotic cells

Posted on 23 August, 2019 by Kelle Freel

What were you doing 10 years ago? Can you remember? Were you, perhaps, trying to sort out the origins of eukaryotic life? A pre-print (yet to be peer-reviewed) was released earlier this month by Imachi et al., describing a 12 … Continue reading →

Posted in ecology, evolution, genomics, metagenomics, microbiology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Snapshots of Biodiversity: eDNA as a methodology for species detection

Posted on 14 August, 2019 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Nicole Conner wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  She is a Master’s student in Dr. Thane Wibbels’ lab where she is developing new protocol to detect diamondback terrapins off … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, citizen science, community, conservation, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, fieldwork, metagenomics, natural history | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s all because of the holobiont

Posted on 16 July, 2019 by Laetitia Wilkins

It’s conference season at the Molecular Ecologist. I went for the first time to a Gordon Research Conference (GRC). GRCs @GordonConf are well known for their efforts to foster an informal and inclusive atmosphere where frontier research in the biological, … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, conferences, conservation, ecology, evolution, Symbiosis, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Luck be a Korarchaeota tonight

Posted on 8 March, 2019 by Kelle Freel

Some tiny microbes are making a pretty big splash, and not just in the hot springs they call home in Yellowstone National Park. Recently, there was an interesting article published in Nature Microbiology about some amazing archaea, which are generally … Continue reading →

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

The (silent) thunder down under: mud volcanoes and the microbes that love them

Posted on 29 January, 2019 by Kelle Freel

One of the most recognized and distributed photographs ever is of the earth taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft 28,000 miles above where you’re reading this, and was named “The Blue Marble“. As the photo implies, our … Continue reading →

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

Conference catch-up: The many colors of snow

Posted on 3 December, 2018 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Red snow … watermelon snow … green snow … did you know that snow came in so many different colors? I had never heard of watermelon ice (#🍉❄) until a talk given by Robin Kodner from Western Washington University at … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, citizen science, community ecology, evolution, fieldwork, mating system, microbiology, natural history, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, speciation, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

For flexible eDNA analysis, just capture whatever you want

Posted on 14 August, 2018 by Jeremy Yoder

Environmental DNA sampling for multi-taxa species detection (i.e., the inference of species presence from genetic material in the environment) has been a hot topic lately. Some of the most exciting recent work has used high-throughput sequence (HTS) to simultaneously screen … Continue reading →

Posted in community ecology, DNA barcoding, metagenomics, methods | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Metabarcoding for every body, every habitat, every time

Posted on 19 July, 2018 by Laetitia Wilkins

The immediate reason why I wanted to write about Boosting DNA metabarcoding for biomonitoring with phylogenetic estimation of operational taxonomic units’ ecological profiles is its usefulness for the scientific community and the effort of the authors to make their study reproducible. … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, community, community ecology, DNA barcoding, fieldwork, metagenomics, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, R | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What is DAS? A new tool to recover genomes from metagenomes

Posted on 8 June, 2018 by Kelle Freel

There are a lot of data out there, and if you haven’t already noticed the ‘omics train has steadily stayed its path through the fruitful (but challenging) world of metagenomics. Metagenomics offers the chance to unravel complex microbial communities without … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, community ecology, genomics, metagenomics, methods, microbiology, next generation sequencing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Signal Boosting a Comprehensive Review of eDNA and Metabarcoding Studies

Posted on 10 April, 2018 by Katharine Coykendall

Everything is meta these days – metabarcoding, metagenomics, and now meta blog posts that are reviews of reviews. Much like every ecologist at least dabbles in the molecular world, so most of those predisposed to molecular ecology and population genetics … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, community ecology, DNA barcoding, metagenomics, methods, microbiology, next generation sequencing, population genetics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment