Category Archives: plants

Conifer convergence

Posted on 17 October, 2016 by Reid Brennan

Convergent local adaptation is typically studied within a species or between closely related species. In these cases, it is perhaps not unexpected to observe parallel evolution due to common genetic variation, constraints, etc. Convergence between species is somewhat less studied, … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, genomics, plants, selection, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Genomics of Rapid Adaptation

Posted on 1 August, 2016 by Bryan McLean

Phenology (the timing of life cycle events such as growth, breeding, or migration) is among the most sensitive organismal traits to climate and environmental change. In recent years, phenological shifts have been documented in numerous taxa, in traits such as … Continue reading →

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The not so singular process of hybridization

Posted on 27 May, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

What, if anything, are hybrids? Zach Gompert and Alex Buerkle ask this question in a special issue in Evolutionary Applications. Hybrids occur when unrelated individuals mate, but how distant do the taxa need to be to constitute a cross? The varied … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, conservation, domestication, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, plants | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A new (quantitative!) method for comparative phylogeography

Posted on 4 May, 2016 by Katie Everson

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

What makes a range?

Posted on 1 April, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Why do species have restricted geographic distributions? Classic ecological perspectives tell us distribution limits occur where ecological parameters coincide with the boundaries of ecological niches. Evolutionary perspectives, on the other hand, surmise distribution boundaries reflect a failure of niche evolution. Though small … Continue reading →

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There and back again: an angiosperm’s tale

Posted on 19 February, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is the dominant seagrass in the northern hemisphere and provides the foundation of highly productive ecosystems that rival tropical rain forests and coral reefs in ecosystem services. Zostera isn’t really a grass, but a monocot, like a … Continue reading →

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Genomics of Hybridization – Part 1

Posted on 21 January, 2016 by Arun Sethuraman

In a series of articles, I will discuss recent advances in hybridization genomics – the fundamentals of adaptive introgression, “islands of speciation”, differential gene flow, and linked selection have been discussed in my previous posts (here, here, and also at … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, methods, natural history, next generation sequencing, pedigree, phylogenetics, plants, population genetics, RNAseq, software, speciation, species delimitation, STRUCTURE, theory, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

An Oedipus complex in mosses?

Posted on 11 December, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Nannandrous … phyllodioicous … gotta love botanical terms and these will most definitely find their way into this week’s list of favorite words! Both refer to the tiny epiphytic nature of males situated on much larger female shoots. There may be many … Continue reading →

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The next, next generation: long reads facilitate assembly & annotation in large genome species

Posted on 10 December, 2015 by Melissa DeBiasse

The typical procedure for constructing a draft genome or transcriptome using current second generation, high throughput sequencing platforms involves generating short reads about 150 base pairs long, assembling those short reads into larger contigs, putting the contigs in the correct order to create … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, next generation sequencing, plants, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Pre-adapted algal ancestors colonized land

Posted on 7 December, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

The colonization of land by plants 450 Mya marked a major transition on Earth and was one of the critical events that led to the emergence of extant terrestrial ecosystems. Chief among the challenges the terrestrial environment presented for these … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, plants, transcriptomics | Tagged | Leave a comment