Category Archives: conservation

The almighty CRISPR-Cas9 technology: The future of conservation?

Posted on 12 Sep, 2016 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

In the first post on CRISPR-Cas9, I’ve explained how bacteria and archaea create a “database” of infections and use it as a form of prokaryotic immunization. This time, I’m going to concentrate on how biotechnology turns this natural phenomenon into … Continue reading →

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A tale of mammoths and a disappearing lake

Posted on 4 Aug, 2016 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

A wonderful study revealed a sad story of the St. Paul Island population of woolly mammoths. Using a creative and diverse set of analytical approaches, scientists identified freshwater shortage as the likely cause of their extinction. A cross-disciplinary collaboration of … Continue reading →

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Personal narrative of a journey from zoos to academia

Posted on 2 Jun, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

The Molecular Ecologist receives a small commission for purchases made on Bookshop.org via links from this post. Back in February, the South Carolina Aquarium and The Center for Humans and Nature hosted the finale in the Holland Lifelong Learning series of “Why do … Continue reading →

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The not so singular process of hybridization

Posted on 27 May, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

What, if anything, are hybrids? Zach Gompert and Alex Buerkle ask this question in a special issue in Evolutionary Applications. Hybrids occur when unrelated individuals mate, but how distant do the taxa need to be to constitute a cross? The varied … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, conservation, domestication, evolution, genomics, natural history, next generation sequencing, plants | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Steelhead in a random forest: identifying the genetic basis of migration

Posted on 25 May, 2016 by Reid Brennan

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been quite successful in identifying variants associated with various phenotypes (I suppose there is some debate surrounding this statement. For an interesting, if dated, discussion look here). While most of this work was originally conducted … Continue reading →

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Disentangling the wolf-coyote admixture through an ancestry-based approach

Posted on 3 May, 2016 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Large carnivores like bears and wolves still pose a puzzle for systematics and population genetics. The more data we get, the more complex their evolutionary history seems to be.

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Are genetic drift and inbreeding the same thing?

Posted on 14 Mar, 2016 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Does it ever happen to you that the more you try to understand something, the more difficult to understand it turns out to be? Recently, I’ve had such a problem with two of the very basic microevolutionary phenomena – genetic … Continue reading →

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Fred Allendorf receives the 2015 Molecular Ecology Prize

Posted on 4 Mar, 2016 by Jeremy Yoder

Fred Allendorf literally wrote the book on conservation genetics, as part of a career of research ranging from basic evolutionary biology to studies of the specific genetic risks incurred by rare and endangered species. The 2015 Molecular Ecology prize recognizes … Continue reading →

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Genomics of Hybridization – Part II, Top three of 2015

Posted on 28 Jan, 2016 by Arun Sethuraman

Death Valley pupfishes (Cyprinodon) are among the most endangered vertebrates on earth, with small inbred populations, with heavy risks of extinction in extreme environments. Martin et al. (2016) in a recent publication quantify diversity and adaptability in a very small population … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, conservation, genomics, methods, natural history, next generation sequencing, population genetics, R, software, speciation, STRUCTURE, theory | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Lonesome George, no longer?

Posted on 18 Dec, 2015 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Galapagos tortoises summon up images of great, lumbering beasts on idyllic islands that planted the seeds of natural selection in the young naturalist, Charles Darwin. In a recent paper, Poulakakis et al. (2015) provide genetic evidence of two lineages of tortoises … Continue reading →

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