Category Archives: natural history

Mapping genomes and navigating behavior for wildlife conservation

Virginia Aida wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is currently evaluating a potential pharmacotherapy in traumatic brain injury and anticipates graduating with her MS in summer 2017.  Although she … Continue reading

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Like Turtles, Terrapin Research Moves a Little Slow

Marlee Hayes wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her primary interests focus on challenges in conservation and sustainability. Previously, she evaluated fitness of post-hatchling Diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin), … Continue reading

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Different ways to have sex, yet still be a weed

Baker (1955) noticed that when mates are lacking, the ability to undergo self-fertilization will greatly enhance colonization success. Uniparental reproduction seems to be common in colonizing species, whether it’s from a continent to an oceanic island, during a biological invasion or during range … Continue reading

Posted in Coevolution, comparative phylogeography, evolution, natural history, phylogeography, population genetics, selection | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Small Molecules, Big Differences

Mary Latimer wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is a third year PhD student at UAB studying miRNAs and methionine restriction. Her hobbies include cats, netflix, … Continue reading

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Polyploidy in the era of GBS

Ploidy, dear reader, is something that I think about literally all the time. It impacts every facet of my research from the field to the bench to the stats used to analyze data sets. It’s been simultaneously the greatest and the … Continue reading

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid, Molecular Ecology, the journal, natural history, plants, speciation | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Molting on the molecular level: how blue crabs become soft-shell crabs

Megan Roegner wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Megan spent her early years in Cape Town, South Africa playing in the tidal pools along the coast and developing … Continue reading

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Dishing out Art: “Soiling” our microbiology curriculum

Sarah Adkins wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is a MS student working with Dr. Jeffrey Morris at UAB. They are looking at how microbes (i.e., phytoplankton and E. … Continue reading

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Have we got the power?

Sabrina Heiser wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sabrina grew up in Germany, completed a BSc (Hons) in Marine Biology at Plymouth University (UK) and then lived … Continue reading

Posted in blogging, community ecology, evolution, haploid-diploid, natural history, NSF, population genetics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

For these birds, isolation-by-distance is (almost) all in the family

Isolation by distance is one of the most fundamental processes of molecular ecology. In any finite population, the frequency of a genetic variant will change from generation to generation due to random sampling effects, which we call genetic drift. In … Continue reading

Posted in natural history, pedigree, population genetics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Artificial connectivity … have we overlooked the native range?

Invasive species are problematic throughout the world’s ecosystems, down even to their very name which incites heated debates. Every month, studies are published that describe the genetic structure and gene flow of non-native species in their introduced ranges. Often, these … Continue reading

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