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Category Archives: population genetics
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
What's left of the black rhino's genetic diversity?
With the current poaching epidemic we might lose rhinos before we even have time to get to know them. Luckily, the day has come and thanks to Yoshan Moodley, Mike Bruford and their team we know have a pretty good … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, evolution, Paleogenomics, phylogeography, population genetics
Tagged black rhino, conservation, extinction
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The seeds of speciation
You don’t have to get very far into an evolution textbook before you bump into Darwin’s finches, the birds descended from South American finches that colonized the Galapagos Islands and “radiated” into an array of different species, each with a … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, birds, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, population genetics, speciation
Tagged crossbill, lodgepole pine
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Free to go but required to stay: contrasting views on mitochondrial relationships
Ever since a bacterium found itself mysteriously engulfed in our eukaryotic ancestor, things have been, uh, complicated regarding our two genomes. One is big, one is small. One is circular, one is linear. One is numerous in each cell, the … Continue reading
Diving into the inbreeding depression
This post is going to be a little melodramatic, but I hope that despite all the reading on inbreeding depression, you won’t get depressed. As the media finally started feeding us all the catastrophic news about the impact of global … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, genomics, population genetics, theory
Tagged genomics, inbreeding, inbreeding depression, Isle Royale wolves, pedigree
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Unbalanced population sampling and STRUCTURE
The utility and intuition offered by the program STRUCTURE, and more generally, the ‘admixture’ model of Pritchard et al. (2000) are unquestioned – with tens of thousands of citations, it retains its lead among the most popular population genetics software. … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, genomics, howto, methods, population genetics, software, STRUCTURE
Tagged gene flow, methods, population structure
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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
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
Posted in adaptation, conservation, evolution, natural history, phylogeography, population genetics
Tagged Biological Invasion, Ciona, Evolution, invasive species, marine, Sessile
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Humans, selection, evolution and ecological timescales … a potent cocktail
It’s been awhile since I last was able to write for TME. But, finally, I’ve stolen away some time to write about a recent study in Ecology Letters that I couldn’t put down once I started reading it. Yes, it’s about mating … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, evolution, natural history, plants, population genetics, selection, theory
Tagged Evolution, mating system, pesticide, selection
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Diving into chilly California waters, understanding genomic differentiation and the role of gene transfer in marine cyanophages
At this point, it’s clear: microbes are everywhere, there are a lot of them, and they are important. In fact, they are more abundant, more diverse and older than any other organism we have on this planet. In particular, cyanobacteria … Continue reading
Posted in Coevolution, evolution, genomics, horizontal gene transfer, microbiology, population genetics
Tagged cyanophage, species, virus
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