Category Archives: conservation

In defense of hatcheries: a response to the “Artifishal” documentary

Posted on 16 September, 2019 by Katharine Coykendall

A month or so ago, I had opportunity to screen the documentary, “Artifishal” (admittedly, a pretty clever title), in a room full of fish biologists, geneticists, and hatchery managers.  The premise of the film is that both hatcheries and open … Continue reading →

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Even in the ocean, geography shapes how species cope with changing climates

Posted on 11 September, 2019 by Jeremy Yoder
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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

Genetics of Returning Turtles

Posted on 7 August, 2019 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Amy Bonka wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Amy grew up in Florida, completed a BS in Biology with a concentration in Marine Science and Chemistry as well … Continue reading →

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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

The state of coral: A mini-review

Posted on 4 June, 2019 by Katharine Coykendall

Coral reefs are one of the main harbingers of the climate crisis.  As such, there have been numerous studies, TED talks, Blue Planet episodes, podcasts, et cetera, about the state of corals. I’ve condensed a select few research findings for … Continue reading →

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Bigger bees bumble by barriers, end up with lower population genetic differentiation

Posted on 16 May, 2019 by Jeremy Yoder
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A Highlight of Molecular Ecology outside of Academia

Posted on 21 December, 2018 by Katharine Coykendall

I’ve recently made a career change. Actually, I’m not even sure whether to call it that, or the next step of a natural, if meandering progression of a scientist not on the academic career path. Even though I see more and … Continue reading →

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Earth BioGenome: The launch of biology’s moonshot

Posted on 7 December, 2018 by Alex Twyford

The Earth BioGenome Project aims to sequence all currently described ~1.5 million eukaryotic species on earth (Lewin et al., 2018; Figure 1). The scale and scope are enormous, and it is hard to imagine a more ambitious but exciting goal. … Continue reading →

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How island foxes are living on the edge

Posted on 23 November, 2018 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

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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