Category Archives: selection

Are population genomic scans for locally adapted loci too successful?

Posted on 13 Mar, 2018 by Jeremy Yoder

Last Friday, Molecular Ecology released an interesting new systematic review online ahead of print. Colin Ahrens and coauthors at a number of Australian research institutions compiled results from 66 papers reporting tests for locally adapted loci based on either FST … Continue reading →

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Molecular ecology, the flowchart

Posted on 2 Jan, 2018 by Jeremy Yoder

Update: You can now buy a poster print of the Flowchart, with proceeds going to support The Molecular Ecologist! Towards the end of last semester my department’s evolutionary genetics journal club read Rasmus Nielsen’s terrific 2005 review of tests for … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, bioinformatics, genomics, howto, infographic, linkage mapping, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, phylogeography, population genetics, selection | 2 Comments

The genomic architecture of ecological speciation

Posted on 16 Aug, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

Speciation reshapes the ways genetic diversity is distributed in the genome — it’s been said that the establishment of reproductive isolation is essentially the evolution of genome-wide linkage disequilibrium. The “genomic islands of speciation” model of ecological isolation imagines genome-wide … Continue reading →

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#Evol2017 catch-up — Effects of range expansions on mating system

Posted on 11 Jul, 2017 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Two weeks (more about that in a post I’ve written for Wednesday!) after the closing day of the 2017 Evolution Meetings, the Molecular Ecologists have all dispersed from Portland, though some may have left things behind! Still, the conference was so … Continue reading →

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When less might be more: The evolution of reduced genomes

Posted on 23 Jun, 2017 by Kelle Freel

The advent of affordable genome sequencing has provided us with a wealth of data. Researchers have sequenced everything from Escherichia coli (4.6 Mbp genome size), to sea urchins (810 Mbp), chimpanzees (3.3 Gbp), and humans (3.2 Gbp). Then there are the … 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

Shared patterns of genomic diversity across populations of distantly related taxa

Posted on 5 Jun, 2017 by Arun Sethuraman

Genomic diversity is shaped by the complex interplay between the effects of genetic drift and natural selection among populations. Several of these effects, especially those of linked selection at neutral sites, adaptive introgression, and barriers to migration (often called “genomic … Continue reading →

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To RADseq or not to RADseq?

Posted on 17 Apr, 2017 by Jeremy Yoder

It’s a cliche to say that we live in a moment of unprecedented possibility for molecular ecology, as high-throughput sequencing methods drive the cost of collecting DNA sequence data ever lower. But at the same time, it’s a tricky moment, … Continue reading →

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Different ways to have sex, yet still be a weed

Posted on 28 Mar, 2017 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Baker (1955) noticed that when mates are lacking, the ability to undergo self-fertilization will greatly enhance colonization success. Uniparental reproduction seems to be common in colonizing species, whether it’s from a continent to an oceanic island, during a biological invasion or during range … Continue reading →

Posted in Coevolution, comparative phylogeography, evolution, natural history, phylogeography, population genetics, selection | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dishing out Art: “Soiling” our microbiology curriculum

Posted on 14 Mar, 2017 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Sarah Adkins wrote this post as a final project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Science Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is a MS student working with Dr. Jeffrey Morris at UAB. They are looking at how microbes (i.e., phytoplankton and E. … Continue reading →

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