Category Archives: RNAseq

Sparrows and spiders and aggression, oh my!

Posted on 11 Sep, 2020 by Kathleen Grogan

One of the major goals of evolutionary biology is to link phenotypic variation with specific genetic variation, yet for behavioral phenotypes in non-model species, this task remains daunting and generally elusive. Although behaviors are heritable and clearly acted upon by … Continue reading →

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Co-opting responses for old enemies

Posted on 24 Mar, 2020 by Kathleen Grogan

On Friday, Shelby Gantt introduced us to an unusual type of parasite, the brood parasite! As Shelby eloquently described, brood parasitism is when an individual’s offspring are raised by someone else who incurs a cost to raising these offspring. The … Continue reading →

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The world through the senses of a pangolin

Posted on 14 Feb, 2020 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

This Saturday, February 15, is World Pangolin Day, and thus it is a good time to do some PR for these fascinating animals. Continue reading →

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One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes and Not a Single to Spare

Posted on 3 Feb, 2020 by R Shawn Abrahams

What is the weight of a transcriptome? How about a thousand? Every day new sequencing machines are purring away, base pair by base pair, producing novel insights into the genomes of our favorite organisms. As technology improves, costs come down, and opportunities … Continue reading →

Posted in phylogenetics, plants, RNAseq, transcriptomics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The genomic & physiological basis of high altitude adaptation in North American deer mice

Posted on 31 Jan, 2020 by Kathleen Grogan

In biology, there are many ways to solve evolutionary ‘challenges’ so it always amazes me when organisms solve them in similar ways. And I love a good paper that adds to our attempts to dissect multi-trait adaptations. Recently, Schweizer et … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, evolution, genomics, mammals, population genetics, RNAseq, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Beetles' diversity was driven by coevolution with plants — and a little help from some microbial friends

Posted on 21 Jan, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder
Posted in insects, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, plants, RNAseq | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

They joy of genome sequencing: when genomics meets natural history

Posted on 30 Jul, 2018 by Alex Twyford

When I have a massive pile of papers that I need to read, I can’t help but look at the ones with interesting natural history first. There’s something exceptionally satisfying about using modern tools to dig deeper into the features … Continue reading →

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RNA data ruins a tempting just-so story of mutualism between algae and salamanders

Posted on 23 Aug, 2017 by Rob Denton

Most relationships between animals and microbes interface in one of two locations: on the outside of animal cells (mostly to the benefit of both parties, think gut microbiota) or on the inside of animal cells (mostly to the benefit of … Continue reading →

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The largest mammalian genome is not polyploid

Posted on 24 Jul, 2017 by Bryan McLean

Some 40 million years ago in South America, following the arrival of the common ancestor of caviomorph rodents from the Old World, big changes were afoot. Specifically, the caviomorph colonists were beginning to give rise to an extant evolutionary progeny … Continue reading →

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On hyRAD-X, another option for museum genomics

Posted on 9 Jun, 2017 by Ethan Linck

Last year, I profiled Suchan et al.’s “hyRAD” method for reduced-representation genome sequencing of degraded sources of DNA using RAD probes. While it’s too early to say whether hyRAD will be widely used by molecular ecologists looking to integrate historic … Continue reading →

Posted in genomics, methods, natural history, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, RNAseq, selection, transcriptomics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment