Urban ecology, evolution, and racism

Posted on 31 Aug, 2020 by Kathleen Grogan

Occasionally, while reading the literature, you stumble across a paper that is so eloquent and beautiful that you are awestruck. Since that happened to me this weekend, today’s post is a call to you to go read the incredible synthesis and call to action written by Schell et al. in Science (2020) – The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments. In this paper, the authors affirm that biologists working in urban environments must consider how racial oppression affects the biological change they study.

Lead author Dr. Christopher Schell.
For more info, visit his webpage – https://faculty.washington.edu/cjschell/wordpress/people/

Evolutionary biologists have increasingly become interested in how the environmental change due to urbanization leads to changes in the phenotypic, genetic, and species make-up of urban ecosystems. Indeed, between 1965 and 1989, only 124 papers with the words “Urban ecology” in the abstract were published according to a quick non-exhaustive search of Web of Science (mean = 5.0 papers per year; performed 8-31-2020). However, from 1990 until 2019, the rate of publication increased exponentially to over 1,000 papers in 2019 alone.

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A decade of The Molecular Ecologist

Posted on 31 Jul, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder
Conveniently, I made a montage-header for The Molecular Ecologist back when we took a stab at crowdfunding in 2016.

I recently took a look through the “Archives by month” drop-down in our right-hand sidebar and discovered that it goes all the way back to July 2010. Which means The Molecular Ecologist had its tenth anniversary this very month — specifically back on July 11, an even decade since Brant Faircloth kicked off the blog with a rundown of essential (Python-centric) bioinformatic tools.

Given that it snuck up on us, and in the middle of the summer, and in the middle of this summer, we don’t have any kind of big event planned. But I didn’t want to let the month close out without marking the occasion. So here’s a rundown of some major events in the history of this fine blog:

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Serendipitous history in the microbial making

Posted on 24 Jul, 2020 by Kelle Freel

It’s been over 100 years since the Dutch Microbiologist Martinus Willem Beijerinck theorized that microbes could oxidize manganese to generate energy for growth. Last week, the first evidence for this theory was published, and you might be surprised about from where these fascinating microbes hail.

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The Molecular Ecologist Podcast: Rivers and rabbit resistance

Posted on 6 Jul, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder
(Flickr: Leandra Fallis)

A new episode of The Molecular Ecologist Podcast is now out on Anchor.fm. In this episode,

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Posted in Action Item, career, community ecology, conservation, howto, microbiology, TME Podcast | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Online Resources for Student/Postdoc/Faculty Professional Development

Posted on 25 Jun, 2020 by Kathleen Grogan

I’m fascinated by the question of how someone learns to be a good scientist, academic, colleague, collaborator, mentor, etc. The obvious answer is that we learn from our peers and mentors during our PhD and postdoctoral training. However, especially as a graduate student but occasionally now, it can feel like I’m flailing around in the dark about how best to handle a problem or respond to a situation. Like any true millennial, in addition to turning to friends and colleagues for the answer, I consult the interwebz.

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Down (Under) The Rabbit Hole

Posted on 23 Jun, 2020 by Kelle Freel

Maybe it’s a wild guess, but most of us have probably learned a little more about viruses lately than we thought we ever would. Little did I know, before this article, that I’d also learn quite a bit about a 3,256 km long network of fences constructed in the early 1900’s and why you can bring it up in the same breath as…(did you guess?)….viruses.  

Let’s start with rabbits and their favorite continent: Australia. Rabbits were first brought to Australia for meat in the late 1700’s and were generally contained on farms. However, European rabbits were released in 1859 to be hunted for sport. It took them no time flat to do what they do best, and they quickly became well established (more info here). Within ~10 years they reached astronomical numbers and completely devastated crops and pastures, leading to soil erosion and threatening native plants with extinction. In just 50 years they colonized 2/3 of Australia… wow and yikes at the same time.

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Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, ecology, evolution, selection | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Where Did This Flower Come From?

Posted on 19 Jun, 2020 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Sam Gregory wrote this post as a project for  Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Scientific Communication course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sam earned a BS in biology and BFA in studio art from Birmingham-Southern College, and is currently pursuing an MS in biology at UAB. He is fascinated by Alabama’s diverse ecosystems, particularly the currently-threatened arthropod communities that serve a foundational role in these systems. Since starting graduate school, he has focused on studying both ecological systems and molecular techniques in order to equip himself for future research.

The valley which lies where India, Pakistan, and China converge has a problem with invasive species. This is unsurprising, as many regions have such issues. More surprisingly, though, is the species which has invaded – daffodils.

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Posted in adaptation, bioinformatics, blogging, Coevolution, demography, ecology, evolution, phylogeography, plants, Science Communication | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Dreaming of Fieldwork Post 1

Posted on 16 Jun, 2020 by Kathleen Grogan

For many of us, fieldwork has been cancelled this summer due to COVID-19, leading to a lot of fieldwork nostalgia. We forget the dirty clothes (and everything else), the long hours, the bruises & cuts, the broken or stuck vehicles, the same food for 60 days. We remember the beauty and the wonder and the excitement of getting that last sample! To try to tide you over for a brief while, here are some of our favorite photos from fieldwork done by the TME Contributors. Also, we’d love to feature photos from you, our readers! See the bottom of the post for details.

Jeremy Yoder — @JBYoder with graduate students in Joshua Tree National Park, 2019
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Posted in ecology, fieldwork, just for fun | 2 Comments

Genes rolling down the river

Posted on 12 Jun, 2020 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Sarah Shainker wrote this post as a part of Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sarah completed a B.S. in Marine Biology at the College of Charleston before serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines, where she developed interests in environmental education and communicating science to conservation and management stakeholders. She is currently a first-year PhD student and a Blazer Fellow and NSF GRFP Fellow in the Krueger Hadfield lab. She plans to integrate population genetics and a citizen science monitoring network to develop eco-evolutionary studies of freshwater macroalgae in the riverscapes of the southeast United States. 

Genes travel on land, in rivers, and through the sea

Landscape genetics combines population genetics, landscape ecology, and spatial structure to study the influence of the environment on genetic population structure. The field originated, as you can probably glean from the name, through the study of terrestrial species.

As terrestrial organisms ourselves, it’s not too difficult to imagine the forces that may restrict or promote dispersal and gene flow. Increasing geographic distances between populations are expected to correspond with genetic isolation. Landscape features like rivers, mountain ranges, or patches of deforested land may create discrete barriers between populations. Continuous variables like rainfall or temperature create resistance which may slow down dispersal and gene flow. 

As the field of landscape genetics has grown to include aquatic and marine organisms, we’ve learned that our expectations of what genetic patterns look like across space do not always translate neatly to seascapes and riverscapes. There are some key differences in the lifestyles and challenges of organisms inhabiting different environments. Distinct hypotheses have therefore been developed to explain genetic variation in seas and rivers (Davis et. al., 2018).

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Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, citizen science, Coevolution, community ecology, comparative phylogeography, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, fieldwork, haploid-diploid, natural history, Science Communication | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Shutting down our science in solidarity with the #Strike4BlackLives

Posted on 10 Jun, 2020 by Jeremy Yoder
Via ShutDownSTEM

We’re joining today’s Strike for Black Lives as part of ShutDownSTEM — taking the day away from our scientific work to study, plan, and act against racism and police violence in the places we live and research. It’s a good day to join a protest in your city — look for your local Black Lives Matter group on social media, and make a plan — or to take time for reading and research on topics that are all too easy to put off when you’re chasing the next deadline. ShutDownSTEM provides a deep list of resources for people at all levels of engagement and familiarity with anti-racist work; here’s a few we at TME can personally recommend:

  • The National Museum of African American History and Culture offers a detailed introduction to anti-racism, with links to lots of supporting material;
  • Here’s a Twitter thread of articles from Science (available without paywall) addressing diversity and equity issues, and possible solutions;
  • Angela Saini’s book Superior is an up-to-date, thorough, and highly readable history of the deep entanglement of race science with evolution and genetics;
  • Britt Rusert’s Fugitive Science is a more academic, but absolutely fascinating, history of African Americans’ engagement with science during the nineteenth century, when the very concepts of “science” and “scientists” were still emerging

If you’re a PI or a leader in a workplace or campus group, consider selecting some readings to support an ongoing book or journal club. Whatever you do with the day, try to make it something that you can carry on, and build on, when you return to your lab, field site, or classroom.

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