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Author Archives: Jeremy Yoder
Nominations open for the 2024 Molecular Ecology Prize
From the Molecular Ecology Prize Committee: We are soliciting nominations for the annual Molecular Ecology Prize. The field of molecular ecology is young and inherently interdisciplinary. As a consequence, research in molecular ecology is not currently represented by a single … Continue reading
Don’t ask “When is it coevolution?” — ask “How is it coevolution?”
Ask me to pick a single word that describes what I study, and I’ll typically say “coevolution.” This is probably true of most evolutionary biologists who study interactions between species — plants and pollinators, hosts and symbionts, predators and prey, et … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, ecology, evolution, mini-review
Tagged disease ecology, herbivory, mutualism, natural selection, parasitism, symbiosis
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A paleogenomic peek into the human history of the Americas — and all its complications
The following is a guest post from Ellen Quinlan, a PhD Candidate in Biology at Wake Forest University. Ellen’s dissertation work studies the ecology and population genomics of altitudinal range limits in Andean trees. The Molecular Ecologist receives a small commission … Continue reading
Summer session accountability
Summer, as an astronomical season, doesn’t end for a few weeks yet, but academic summer is well and truly over. Today is already the end of the first week of classes on my campus, and both the courses I’m teaching … Continue reading
The glaciers of the last ice age left their mark on the genetic diversity of species across the globe
For the last two and a half million years or so — up until a certain species of upright-walking ape descendants really started making their presence known — the greatest force shaping Earth’s biological diversity may well have been ice. … Continue reading
Posted in evolution, insects, mammals, mutation, phylogeography, plants, population genetics
Tagged glacier, Quaternary
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What internet are you reading these days?
The Molecular Ecologist receives a small commission for purchases made on Bookshop.org via links from this post. After my post earlier this week about how I’m organizing my online reading, it’s occurred to me that it might be useful to go into further … Continue reading
How are you reading the Internet these days?
In the wake of Twitter’s ongoing uh reinvention, and my departure from the site, it’s really become apparent how much I was leaning on Science Twitter as a front page of the Internet — the place I went to find out … Continue reading
The key to a productive ecosystem may be plant neighbors’ chemistry
One of the grand patterns across the diversity of flowering plants is that major groups of species are deeply united by shared chemistry, especially “secondary” biochemical products that don’t directly contribute to processes like photosynthesis, growth, and reproduction. Secondary compounds … Continue reading
Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, ecology, phylogenetics
Tagged plant chemistry, plants
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Evolution 2023: Highlights of evolution and ecological genetics at Albuquerque
Evolution is back, folks. That is, the 2023 joint annual meeting of the American Society of Naturalists, Society of Systematic Biologists, and Society for the Study of Evolution, held last week in Albuquerque, New Mexico, felt just about like its pre-pandemic self. The … Continue reading
The Molecular Ecologist is a Bookshop.org affiliate
The Molecular Ecologist is a scholarly blog, and we’ve had books and book reviews as one of our focuses for as long as I’ve been managing things here. For almost as long, we’ve been set up as an Amazon affiliate, … Continue reading