Category Archives: evolution

Hybridization in the depths of the last glacial period created a world-conquering clover

Plants’ flexibility with the structure of their genome — able to cope with proliferating transposons, whole-genome duplications, or even acquisition of complete sets of chromosomes from another species — is a big source of evolutionary novelty. Duplication of a single gene … Continue reading

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Luck be a Korarchaeota tonight

Some tiny microbes are making a pretty big splash, and not just in the hot springs they call home in Yellowstone National Park. Recently, there was an interesting article published in Nature Microbiology about some amazing archaea, which are generally … Continue reading

Posted in community ecology, ecology, evolution, genomics, metagenomics, microbiology, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Is taxonomy still relevant to innovative science?

Elise Keister wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Elise studies the impact of climate change on corals as a PhD student in Dr. Dustin Kemp’s lab. Elise … Continue reading

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“Through endurance we conquer.”* Are humans really the only ones who can make it across Drake’s Passage?

Sabrina Heiser wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics 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 in … Continue reading

Posted in blogging, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, genomics, haploid-diploid | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Kelp forests: the underwater woodlands

Aisha O’ Connor wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She sat in on lectures while she was at UAB as part of a British Phycological Society Student Bursary … Continue reading

Posted in blogging, ecology, evolution, fieldwork, haploid-diploid, natural history, population genetics, Science Communication | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Symbiotic organs shaped by distinct modes of genome evolution in cephalopods

Last week I was whining about gaps in our understanding of evolutionary processes in the ocean. The universe heard me, and today I am satisfied to write about the published genome of Euprymna scolopes – the Hawaiian bobtail squid and … Continue reading

Posted in Coevolution, evolution, genomics, microbiology, next generation sequencing, Symbiosis | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Do we need to get to Mars first before we start understanding change in our oceans?

The current American administration is excited about its space program on extraterrestrial exploration and discovery. A mission to the moon, several ones to Mars, and perhaps others someday to other planets are part of the current funding plan. NASA has … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, evolution, journal club, population genetics, Science Communication, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Earth BioGenome: The launch of biology’s moonshot

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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Conference catch-up: The many colors of snow

Red snow … watermelon snow … green snow … did you know that snow came in so many different colors? I had never heard of watermelon ice (#🍉❄) until a talk given by Robin Kodner from Western Washington University at … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, citizen science, community ecology, evolution, fieldwork, mating system, microbiology, natural history, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection, speciation, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How island foxes are living on the edge

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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