Category Archives: evolution

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

Population genomics finds veritas in the demographic history of vino

Posted on 17 Oct, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

One of the more, hah, fruitful applications of genomic data has been in crop and livestock improvement. Biologists know that domesticating plants and animals for human use has involved powerful artificial selection — usually inadvertent at first, then intensive and … Continue reading →

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We have the technology. Is sequencing getting better, smaller, faster?

Posted on 21 Sep, 2017 by Kelle Freel

Okay, I know some version of the phrase “recent developments in rapid and affordable sequencing have made blah blah blah possible…” is something you’ve probably read 10,000 times. However, third-generation sequencing platforms have turned out to be pretty darn astounding. … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, fieldwork, genomics, methods, next generation sequencing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

DNA sequence data shows that this "living fossil" isn't so fossilized after all

Posted on 19 Sep, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

Living fossils are a tricky concept for evolutionary biology. In principle it seems simple: living organisms that closely resemble creatures seen in the fossil record going back millions of years. Usually they’re a single representative of a fossil record containing … Continue reading →

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Habitat-matching dispersal facilitates local adaptation

Posted on 15 Sep, 2017 by Reid Brennan

Migration disrupts local adaptation. At least, this is the first reaction I have when I consider these two processes. In fact, my initial thought is almost always: how strong does selection have to be to overcome gene flow? Gene flow … Continue reading →

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In the aftermath of fire, bluebird species boundaries may blur

Posted on 5 Sep, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

One of the most clear-cut reasons that species evolve to fill different ecological niches is competition. Two otherwise similar species that use the same resources experience strong selection favoring the use of less-similar resources, if they have the option. The … Continue reading →

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Experimental harvesting reduces gene expression variation

Posted on 10 Aug, 2017 by Reid Brennan

Human activities represent unique selective pressures for natural populations. This is especially true for fish species where we routinely harvest individuals from the wild, i.e., through fishing. It has been recognized for some time that overfishing can result in population … Continue reading →

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

Non-model organisms are so hot right now

Posted on 4 Aug, 2017 by Kelle Freel

What makes a model organism? Well, as the name suggests, they are widely studied and have been adapted to a vast array of common genetic techniques. A few of the most often utilized organisms, which you are most likely already … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, domestication, evolution, genomics, next generation sequencing, yeast | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Genomes are coming: Sequence libraries from the honey bee reflect associated microbial diversity

Posted on 20 Jul, 2017 by Kelle Freel

One of the coolest of reasons that cheap sequencing is nifty, in my opinion, is that it has allowed researchers to study individual eukaryotic organisms, and their associated microbes (their microbiome). Let’s be real, we are in the midst of … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, community ecology, evolution, genomics, metagenomics, microbiology, next generation sequencing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

This new review explains why soft sweeps are the bane — and the baseline — of ecological genetics

Posted on 18 Jul, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

If you’ve done ecological genetics research in the last decade, you’ve almost certainly cited a series of papers by Pleuni Pennings and Joachim Hermisson, which broke down the problem of soft selective sweeps. Pennings and Hermisson have revisited soft sweeps … Continue reading →

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