Category Archives: phylogeography

What do dolphins, bivalves and algae have in common?

Collaboration as it turns out, between three scientists interested in vertebrates, invertebrates and algae! A few days before we left for Evolution 2016 in Austin, one of my collaborators, Eric Pante, came to Charleston as the final stop in a North American … Continue reading

Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, career, conferences, DNA barcoding, haploid-diploid, natural history, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Integrative Species Delimitation…

Accurate delimitation of species is a fundamental first step that underlies much of what we do in biology. But this can prove challenging in many situations. Why? Let me count the ways. Incomplete lineage sorting, hybridization, morphological conservatism, and niche … Continue reading

Posted in evolution, methods, phylogeography, population genetics, software, species delimitation | 1 Comment

A new (quantitative!) method for comparative phylogeography

Comparative phylogeographic studies usually involve a) documenting a phylogeographic pattern and b) recognizing that the same pattern is congruent in multiple species. But what if species histories are only sortof congruent? Perhaps they share one major splitting event but not later … Continue reading

Posted in Coevolution, phylogeography, plants, software | Tagged , | 5 Comments

hyRAD and museum genomics

While the RAPTURE may have arrived, the development of novel restriction digest-based library prepartation techniques — and portmanteaus — continues unabated. In a paper published in PLoS ONE last month (and previously available as a preprint on bioRxiv), Tomasz Suchan … Continue reading

Posted in genomics, methods, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Earthquakes and rapid evolution

The 1964 Alaskan earthquake was landscape-altering in creating/uplifting numerous islands in the Gulf of Alaska, providing an ideal system to study adaptive evolution of diversification in affected species – the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) being a widely studied example. In … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, STRUCTURE | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anti-predatory adaptations in sticklebacks and butterflies

Two recent studies analyze character shifts in response to different selection regimes – (1) Mullerian mimicry wing patterns in Heliconius butterflies, and (2) anti-intraguild-predator adaptations in armor and shape of threespine sticklebacks. Hoyal Cuthill and Charleston 2015 Wing patterning genes … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, natural history, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, speciation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Genomics of domestication in chicken and cattle

Two recent studies attempt to understand the process of adaptive evolution in domestication and artificial selection by characterizing (a) sweeps, and their association with phenotypes in extant hybrid lines (Sheng et al. 2015), and (b) phylogenomic position of an extinct … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, domestication, evolution, genomics, natural history, Paleogenomics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, speciation, STRUCTURE | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Genetic distance predicts the spread of deadly fungal infections in bats

You’ve probably heard about White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), the particularly nasty fungal pathogen that has decimated North American bat populations over the last decade. Not only has WNS been extremely deadly, but the speed at which it’s spread has been alarming. Really alarming: Understanding … Continue reading

Posted in Molecular Ecology, the journal, phylogeography, population genetics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Measuring dispersal rate in Neotropical fishes in units of 'wallace'

Alfred Russel Wallace often gets second billing compared to Charles Darwin but in a paper recently accepted at Systematic Biology, Tagliacollo et al.  define a new term for their analyses (dispersal rate, D) and measure D in units of ‘wallaces‘ (wa) to honor the contributions of Alfred … Continue reading

Posted in methods, phylogenetics, phylogeography, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Picking the ripest model with PHRAPL

To study patterns of genetic variation is to consider scale. The choices an investigator makes when designing a study can produce such a beautiful breadth of evolutionary patterns: from populations to species, from local to continental, from ancient to contemporary. The fields that … Continue reading

Posted in methods, phylogeography | Tagged , , | Leave a comment