Category Archives: conservation

Molecular natural history: The Channel Island foxes

Molecular Natural History is a series of posts highlighting what population genetic data has revealed about some of my favorite organisms. There’s no rhyme or reason to what species I’ll feature for this, beyond the fact that they’ve made me … Continue reading

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2023 Molecular Ecology Prize goes to Uma Ramakrishnan, for bringing molecular genetics to conservation practice, policy, and the public

The Molecular Ecology Prize Committee has announced the 2023 recipient of the award, which recognizes an outstanding scientist who has made significant contributions to the still-young field of molecular ecology: This year’s Molecular Ecology Prize is awarded to Dr. Uma … Continue reading

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How do you use genome-wide diversity in conservation?

Measuring how genome-wide diversity matters to threatened species has been a constant endeavor of conservation genetics, and still is in the era of genomics. But what should we do with the fact that it often do not correlate with IUCN Red List categories, a measure of species’ threat status? Continue reading

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What should conservation genomics researchers do about The Gap?

People may forget what you exactly said on your paper, but they won’t forget how your paper makes them feel. I don’t know whose adage that is I was modifying exactly, that perfectly sums my experience with a paper by … Continue reading

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Can small populations benefit from genetic rescue?

The core dogma of conservation biology is clear: small populations are bad for species’ persistence. If we observe a population of endangered vertebrates harboring abundant deleterious mutations but without any reduction in fitness, what is happening there? I would like … Continue reading

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Genetic Rescue – Fitness and genomic consequences

As a PhD student studying the effects of genetic diversity overall and immunogenetic diversity specifically on survival and reproductive success in an endangered primate in captive and wild populations, I thought a lot about the potential effects of inbreeding and … Continue reading

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The Molecular Ecologist Podcast: Rivers and rabbit resistance

A new episode of The Molecular Ecologist Podcast is now out on Anchor.fm. In this episode, Sarah Shainker tells us about how population genetic structure works differently in river drainages; Kelle Freel recaps her reading on the history of rabbits and rabbit-killing viruses … Continue reading

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It’s the city life for me… or maybe not.

Michael Fitch wrote this post as part of Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Evolution course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He completed a B.S. in Biology from the UAB and is currently considering entering the Master’s program.  Current interests… all over … Continue reading

Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, community ecology, comparative phylogeography, conservation, ecology, evolution, genomics, mammals, population genetics, Science Communication | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kelp connections

Aisha O’ Connor wrote this post as part of Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Currently a MS student in the Krueger-Hadfield lab, she is interested in algae and conservation. Aisha tweets @Aisha_MOC. We can … Continue reading

Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, conservation, demography, ecology, evolution, haploid-diploid, Science Communication | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Does it pay to be parasitized?

Raven Edwards wrote this post as a project for Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Evolution course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is a Master’s student in Dr. James McClintock’s lab where she is studying the growth of variegated sea urchins. Raven completed … Continue reading

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