Category Archives: population genetics

What's the most replicated finding in population genetics?

Posted on 18 Aug, 2015 by Jeremy Yoder

DrugMonkey tells a tale of a specific finding in addiction research — that rats provided with an intravenous drip of cocaine solution will push a lever to self-administer the drug — which has been replicated countless times over the decades. … Continue reading →

Posted in population genetics | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Notes from Edmonton and #Botany2015

Posted on 11 Aug, 2015 by Jeremy Yoder

As noted previously, I broke with my usual habit and skipped the Evolution meetings this year. Instead, I attended Botany 2015, a joint meeting of multiple U.S. and Canadian plant-focused scholarly societies held in Edmonton, Alberta — I’d never been … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, conferences, genomics, natural history, phylogenetics, plants, population genetics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Selection scans, and the genomics of adaptive/maladaptive introgression

Posted on 6 Aug, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Natural selection, and the adaptive evolution of hybrid reproductive incompatibilities post divergence are known to be major drivers of speciation. At the phenotype level, these manifest as fitness differences between introgressing populations. At the genomic level, speciation “genes” or “islands” … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, Molecular Ecology, the journal, mutation, natural history, population genetics, selection, speciation, theory | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

PCA of multilocus genotypes in R

Posted on 30 Jul, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

An earlier post from Mark Christie showed up on my feed on calculating allele frequencies from genotypic data in R, and I wanted to put together a quick tutorial on making PCA (Principal Components Analysis) plots using genotypes. I used … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, howto, population genetics, R, software | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Who came first – the Paleo- or Native American?

Posted on 23 Jul, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

In yet another infamous Science vs Nature race, two studies published this Tuesday toss more cans of worms at the ongoing debate about the founding of the Americas – with disparate findings. Uh oh. Skoglund et al. Nature (2015) Genetic … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, next generation sequencing, Paleogenomics, population genetics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Dozens of talks from the Evolution 2015 meetings are on YouTube

Posted on 22 Jul, 2015 by Jeremy Yoder

If, like me, you didn’t make it to the 2015 Evolution meetings — maybe the logistics of a trip to Brazil were beyond your financial and/or temporal means — you can make up for it with the big cache of … Continue reading →

Posted in community, conferences, phylogeography, population genetics | Tagged | 3 Comments

Dispersal by land or by sea

Posted on 15 Jul, 2015 by Rob Denton

Here, we compare and contrast the traits and selective forces influencing the evolution of dispersal in marine and terrestrial systems. From this comparison, a unifying question emerges: when is dispersal for dispersal and when is dispersal a by-product of selection … Continue reading →

Posted in population genetics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Butterfly Effect

Posted on 9 Jul, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

This might just take the prize for the ‘spiciest’ story in molecular co-evolution for 2015, yet. While a lot of the press coverage sounds like caterpillar thanksgiving, the science behind this study stands for the almost incredible power of molecular phylogenetics … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, natural history, population genetics, selection, speciation, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Societal constructs, and Genetic diversity

Posted on 2 Jul, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

While we grapple with numerous discoveries of variation in genomic diversity in humans, interest has subsequently risen in understanding their causes/results. Two recent papers describe experiments to determine (a) the effects of marital rules (who gets to marry whom) on … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, natural history, population genetics, selection, societal structure | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Kennewick, and the Oase I

Posted on 25 Jun, 2015 by Arun Sethuraman

Last week was glorious for ancient DNA enthusiasts – here are some quick blurbs on findings from genomic analyses of the Kennewick man, and the Oase I individual. The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man, Rasmussen et al. (2015) Nature DOI: … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, Paleogenomics, population genetics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment