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Category Archives: genomics
Molting on the molecular level: how blue crabs become soft-shell crabs
Megan Roegner wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Megan spent her early years in Cape Town, South Africa playing in the tidal pools along the coast and developing … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, conservation, domestication, evolution, genomics, natural history
Tagged Aquaculture, Blue Crab, Endocrinology, Physiology, scicomm, Science Communication
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How much wood would a termite chuck…if it was missing its microbial symbionts
Termites get a pretty bad rap, probably because we think of our houses disintegrating when they move in. Ironically, we have a lot to learn from these critters, and their mounds have served as an inspiration for modern architecture. Either … Continue reading
Posted in Coevolution, evolution, genomics, microbiology
Tagged Desulfovibrio, protist, symbiosis, termites, whole genome amplification
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Population genomics in the "melting pot"
North America is full of new arrivals. Europeans colonized the continent starting half a millennium ago, displaced and eradicated native populations, and brought enslaved workers from Africa with them — and further immigrants have followed ever since. This mass movement … Continue reading
Music to an amniote's ears, an "accordion" model of genome size evolution
How did we get where we are? Genetically speaking, that is. A few posts ago, that whole genotype-phenotype question was discussed, how do genomes make plants and animals (and don’t forget the microbes!) look and act how they do. Another … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, evolution, genomics
Tagged adaptation, amniote evolution, natural selection, transposable elements
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That's an H. erato of a different color!
What drives different coloration among birds, insects, flowers? One of the major goals in evolutionary studies is understanding what is going on in DNA that makes organisms different. A fancy way to say this is studying how an organism’s genotype … Continue reading
Posted in evolution, genomics, phylogeography
Tagged butterfly, Heliconius erato, phenotype genotype
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The seeds of speciation
You don’t have to get very far into an evolution textbook before you bump into Darwin’s finches, the birds descended from South American finches that colonized the Galapagos Islands and “radiated” into an array of different species, each with a … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, birds, Coevolution, evolution, genomics, population genetics, speciation
Tagged crossbill, lodgepole pine
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Resurrecting our ghosts: Helen Pilcher’s Bring Back the King
The Molecular Ecologist receives a small commission for purchases made on Bookshop.org via links from this post. On September 7, 1936, at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, a wolf-like creature named Benjamin paced up and down in his cage. As night fell, … Continue reading
Posted in book review, conservation, genomics
Tagged de-extinction, passenger pigeon, thylacine
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Diving into the inbreeding depression
This post is going to be a little melodramatic, but I hope that despite all the reading on inbreeding depression, you won’t get depressed. As the media finally started feeding us all the catastrophic news about the impact of global … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, genomics, population genetics, theory
Tagged genomics, inbreeding, inbreeding depression, Isle Royale wolves, pedigree
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