Category Archives: natural history

Species and sensibility

Posted on 9 Jan, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Pante et al. (2014) performed a literature review of marine population connectivity in order to illustrate the biased estimates of connectivity which can result from the failure to recognize an evolutionary-relevant unit, such as a species. When exploring the connectivity … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, community ecology, conservation, DNA barcoding, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, population genetics, speciation, theory | 6 Comments

Not everyone likes it hot … winter or not

Posted on 26 Dec, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

On this Boxing Day, many of us may be bracing against winter storms.  For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we might all be dreaming of summer weather (including those of us who think a Southern Californian version of winter downright … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, natural history | Leave a comment

haploidy, diploidy, polyploidy … not a problem

Posted on 19 Dec, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Investigating pairwise relatedness is fundamental to the characterization of the mating system and inferring genetic structure. If no pedigree exists, then relatedness is estimated from genetic markers (e.g., microsatellite loci) using method-of-moment or maximum-likelihood methods. However, not all individuals in … Continue reading →

Posted in natural history, pedigree, population genetics, software, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" DNA barcoding and the lost story of Darwin's meadow

Posted on 8 Dec, 2014 by Karen James

Five years ago, I was a co-author on a consortium paper in PNAS that recommended two genes to serve as universal markers for DNA-based identification (DNA barcoding*) of plants. Five years ago, the world celebrated Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. You … Continue reading →

Posted in DNA barcoding, natural history | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The latest gadget for the molecular ecologist’s toolkit

Posted on 21 Nov, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Designing a sampling scheme to collect an organism of interest for a population genetic/genomic study can be fraught with difficulty. How best to sample? Randomly? Or, along a grid? How many individuals to sample? Thirty? Or, perhaps, the sample size … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, methods, Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, pedigree, population genetics, software | 2 Comments

Is genetics a requirement for restoration?

Posted on 12 Nov, 2014 by Rob Denton

The fields of conservation and genetics have relied heavily on one another for quite a while now (they even made an aptly named journal together!). Using genetic information is now an accepted, and even expected, step in recognizing and protecting … Continue reading →

Posted in community ecology, conservation, Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, population genetics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Happy as a clam, despite genetic uniformity

Posted on 7 Nov, 2014 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

  Introduced populations of non-native species are often associated with low genetic diversity, as measured by neutral genetic loci, and, thus, considered a paradox (but see Roman and Darling 2007). The study by Lise-Marie Pigneur and colleagues documents an extreme example … Continue reading →

Posted in natural history, population genetics | Leave a comment