Category Archives: conservation

Snapshots of Biodiversity: eDNA as a methodology for species detection

Posted on 14 Aug, 2019 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Nicole Conner wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  She is a Master’s student in Dr. Thane Wibbels’ lab where she is developing new protocol to detect diamondback terrapins off … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, citizen science, community, conservation, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, fieldwork, metagenomics, natural history | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Genetics of Returning Turtles

Posted on 7 Aug, 2019 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Amy Bonka wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Amy grew up in Florida, completed a BS in Biology with a concentration in Marine Science and Chemistry as well … Continue reading →

Posted in blogging, citizen science, conservation, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, fieldwork, methods, natural history, Science Communication | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

It's all because of the holobiont

Posted on 16 Jul, 2019 by Laetitia Wilkins

It’s conference season at the Molecular Ecologist. I went for the first time to a Gordon Research Conference (GRC). GRCs @GordonConf are well known for their efforts to foster an informal and inclusive atmosphere where frontier research in the biological, … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, conferences, conservation, ecology, evolution, Symbiosis, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The state of coral: A mini-review

Posted on 4 Jun, 2019 by Katharine Coykendall

Coral reefs are one of the main harbingers of the climate crisis.  As such, there have been numerous studies, TED talks, Blue Planet episodes, podcasts, et cetera, about the state of corals. I’ve condensed a select few research findings for … Continue reading →

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Bigger bees bumble by barriers, end up with lower population genetic differentiation

Posted on 16 May, 2019 by Jeremy Yoder
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A Highlight of Molecular Ecology outside of Academia

Posted on 21 Dec, 2018 by Katharine Coykendall

I’ve recently made a career change. Actually, I’m not even sure whether to call it that, or the next step of a natural, if meandering progression of a scientist not on the academic career path. Even though I see more and … Continue reading →

Posted in career, conservation, ecology, funding, pedigree, population genetics, quantitative genetics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Earth BioGenome: The launch of biology’s moonshot

Posted on 7 Dec, 2018 by Alex Twyford

The Earth BioGenome Project aims to sequence all currently described ~1.5 million eukaryotic species on earth (Lewin et al., 2018; Figure 1). The scale and scope are enormous, and it is hard to imagine a more ambitious but exciting goal. … Continue reading →

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How island foxes are living on the edge

Posted on 23 Nov, 2018 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Back in 2016, Robinson et al. (2016) published a genomic analyses of the Channel Island foxes and they showed that despite extremely low genome-wide diversity, the island foxes do not seem to be suffering from inbreeding depression. Read the post … Continue reading →

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Genomic signatures of ancient rendezvous and separation in elephant evolution

Posted on 5 Mar, 2018 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Evidence from various levels of the tree of life is showing that we’ve been picturing ancient encounters between related species all wrong and admixture events are probably more common than expected. Even rendezvous among primates, caniforms, and majestic proboscideans often … Continue reading →

Posted in conservation, evolution, genomics, hybridization, natural history, Paleogenomics, phylogeography | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Climate change and genomic vulnerability

Posted on 8 Jan, 2018 by Ethan Linck

As the world burns and we barrel heedlessly into an ever-smaller and uglier future, predicting how species will respond to climate change will be critical for conservation planning. Intuition suggests most organisms will shift their ranges up in latitude or … Continue reading →

Posted in conservation, evolution, genomics | Tagged | 1 Comment