Category Archives: plants

Polyploidy can melt the frozen niche

Posted on 6 May, 2015 by Rob Denton

The rabbit hole of asexual reproduction literature is full of weird detours in the evolution of life. There are asexual lineages that facultatively have sex, asexuals that still need sperm from other species,  and asexuals that steal sperm from other species, … Continue reading →

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Adaptive divergence in the monkey flower

Posted on 20 Apr, 2015 by Melissa DeBiasse

Theory suggests adaptive divergence can proceed in the face of gene flow when adaptive alleles occur in areas of the genome, such as chromosomal inversions, that are protected from recombination, which can break up beneficial allele pairings. In their recent Evolution paper, … Continue reading →

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dN(eutralist) < dS(electionist) Part 5

Posted on 16 Apr, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

The neutral theory predicts that species with small census (and effective) population sizes are subject to greater drift (or allele frequency fluctuations), and vice versa. In other words, species with larger population sizes are expected to maintain more neutral diversity … Continue reading →

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l'oliva di mare: disturbance and genetic diversity

Posted on 27 Mar, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Seagrasses are important ecosystem-engineers of coastal regions around the world. Previous work has demonstrated the correlation of high genotypic diversity with resistance (e.g., Hughes and Stachowicz 2004) and resilience (e.g., Reusch et al. 2005). In a recently accepted paper in Molecular Ecology, Jahnke, … Continue reading →

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dN(eutralist) = dS(electionist) Part 3

Posted on 19 Mar, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

In a previous post, I discussed the phenomenon of background selection, which results in rapid expungement of neutral alleles linked to loci under purifying or negative selection, and conversely, the rapid fixation of neutral variants that are linked to loci of … Continue reading →

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Just in time for spring break- the phylogenetic and medicinal history of Aloe vera

Posted on 16 Mar, 2015 by Melissa DeBiasse

It’s spring break season across the United States, which means many undergraduates are shedding their winter layers and flocking to warm, tropical destinations. After a week of fun in the sun, I’m sure many of them will rely on  Aloe vera to soothe their sunburns. … Continue reading →

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