We're seeking new molecular ecologists for 2019 and 2020!

The Molecular Ecologist is seeking two new regular contributors for 2019 and 2020! Join us in blogging about “ecology, evolution, and everything in between.”

Ideal candidates should have expertise and experience in the use of genetic data to understand the past and future of the living world. We’re particularly interested in senior graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other working scientists who can discuss basic science on a level that engages research biologists as well as the general public. New contributors should be ready to commit to posting multiple times a month for their first year on the blog. In addition, the two contributors recruited in this cohort will be asked to help manage social media for the blog — either overseeing our Twitter account or reviving our presence on Facebook.

New contributors will receive a stipend for their first year, and may continue on a voluntary basis after that. Blogging for The Molecular Ecologist can be an excellent way to hone familiarity with current research, establish connections within the scientific community, and build a portfolio of science writing for a broader audience. In light of this, we are particularly interested in applications from candidates whose racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender identities are underrepresented in science careers.

To apply, please use our application form to tell us about yourself and why you want to write for The Molecular Ecologist. Applications should be received by the end of the day on 31 October, 2019 to ensure consideration.

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In defense of hatcheries: a response to the "Artifishal" documentary

A month or so ago, I had opportunity to screen the documentary, “Artifishal” (admittedly, a pretty clever title), in a room full of fish biologists, geneticists, and hatchery managers.  The premise of the film is that both hatcheries and open pen aquaculture of salmonids are directly responsible for the decline of natural runs and if allowed to continue, will lead to extirpation of these species. Hoo boy. Talk about the air being sucked out of a room.

The conclusion the documentary comes to is extreme, but it does beg the question of the current consensus  of how salmonid hatcheries impact their wild counterparts. Of course, the answer is “it’s complicated”, mostly because hatcheries are species-, ecosystem-, and goal-specific.  Lumping all hatcheries into a monolithic group (and in the documentary, hatcheries were conflated with oceanic, open net pen aquaculture practices as well) fails to capture the nuances that exist between hatchery programs.  

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Even in the ocean, geography shapes how species cope with changing climates

A green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, in the Caribbean near Bonaire. (Wikimedia: Kris Mikael Krister)

This year, for the first "real" lecture of my evolutionary biology class, I gave an overview of the history of the Earth, from the Big Bang to the present. It went fast, and I only had a couple of slides at the end for one of the geological processes most responsible for current patterns of biodiversity: the climate cycles of the Pleistocene. Periods of warming and cooling, and accompanying changes in sea level and glacial coverage, were engines of diversification, subdividing species’ ranges into refugia, then allowing species pushed towards the equator by advancing ice sheets to expand towards the poles again. These patterns are evident all over terrestrial temperate regions today, and a paper published over the summer in The Molecular Ecologist shows how the impacts of Pleistocene climate change extended beyond land, into marine communities.

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Conference catch-up: Seventh European Phycological Congress Zagreb, Croatia – algae and abominable life cycles!

The first European Phycological Congress was held in Cologne, Germany in 1996. In the last 20-odd years, the meeting has been held every four years since then in Italy, Northern Ireland, Spain, Greece, and then in London in 2015 (see posts from this last EPC here and here).

This year, the Seventh EPC was held in Zagreb, Croatia from 25-30 August. Each day began with a plenary lecture followed by symposia and poster sessions, as well as a silent auction and a banquet. All presentations and events occurred at the Esplanade Hotel, a hotel that was a stop over on the Orient Express. I’ve recapped a selection of talks from each day below.

Participants of EPC 7 in Zagreb, Croatia. Apparently, our assembly by the hotel resulted in a police action as we had a huge group with no announcement of a public gathering! Not bad for a group of phycologists. © EPC 7
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Loki and behold: one microbial culture that brings us one leap closer to understanding the origins of eukaryotic cells

What were you doing 10 years ago? Can you remember? Were you, perhaps, trying to sort out the origins of eukaryotic life?

A pre-print (yet to be peer-reviewed) was released earlier this month by Imachi et al., describing a 12 year long effort to isolate what the authors refer to as a “Lokiarchaeota-related Asgard archaeon from deep marine sediments”. The results presented in this study have been widely covered in articles see here, here, here, or over here for just a few examples. So…what’s the big deal?

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The Research Coordinated Network for Evolution in Changing Seas (RCN-ECS)

The Molecular Ecologist contributors Reid Brennan, Laetitia Wilkins, and I (Stacy Krueger-Hadfield) were invited to attend the Research Coordinated Network for Evolution in Changing Seas synthesis workshop at the Shoals Marine Lab this past week (19-23 August).

Stacy, Reid, and Laetitia

Evolving Seas is a global network of marine scientists and evolutionary biologists.

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Snapshots of Biodiversity: eDNA as a methodology for species detection

Nicole Conner wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  She is a Master’s student in Dr. Thane Wibbels’ lab where she is developing new protocol to detect diamondback terrapins off the coast of Alabama using eDNA. This will allow for an accurate and streamlined process for evaluating the distribution of the species in Alabama. Nicole completed a B.S. in Marine Science and Biology at the University of Alabama and participated in an REU internship through the Duke University Marine Lab in 2017. Throughout her life she has been passionate about the conservation of marine species and hopes to continue participating in research that improves conservation management approaches.

How do we detect an organism that can’t be seen? Or how can we reliably identify a species’ geographic range if it spends its life underwater?

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Posted in bioinformatics, blogging, citizen science, community, conservation, DNA barcoding, ecology, evolution, fieldwork, metagenomics, natural history | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Genetics of Returning Turtles

Amy Bonka wrote this post as a project for Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Conservation Genetics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Amy grew up in Florida, completed a BS in Biology with a concentration in Marine Science and Chemistry as well as an MS in Biology from UAB. She is currently pursuing her PhD as a student in Dr. Thane Wibbels’ lab where her research is focused on early lifehistory behaviors of hatchling sea turtles and the dynamics of arribada nesting in the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle. 

How many come home? 

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What next for DNA barcoding?

I’m a late adopter of DNA barcoding. As a botanist it has often felt that DNA barcoding wasn’t really for me. Unlike in animals, where the mitochondrial gene CO1 often tracks species boundaries, in plants, there is rarely an exact match between DNA barcode sequence and plant species identity. A more general issue is that the use of one or a few regions of non-recombining organellar DNA just doesn’t cut it for answering the population genetic questions I’m most interested in.

But it’s now becoming clear that the scalability of DNA barcoding that allows it to be used on hundreds or thousands of specimens at a reasonable cost may make it a primary tool to accelerate species discovery and to describe biodiversity patterns in the face of massive species extinctions. Perhaps equally important to me is that the plant DNA barcode isn’t set in stone and new sequencing technologies will allow us to find better options for using DNA to tell plant species apart (Hollingsworth et al., 2016).  

Given my new-found enthusiasm for DNA barcoding, last month I went to the 8thInternational Barcoding of Life Conference in Trondheim, Norway, to find out the new developments in this field. Here’s what I learnt:

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It's all because of the holobiont

It’s conference season at the Molecular Ecologist. I went for the first time to a Gordon Research Conference (GRC). GRCs @GordonConf are well known for their efforts to foster an informal and inclusive atmosphere where frontier research in the biological, chemical, physical, and engineering sciences is discussed. Isolated venues and long breaks in the afternoons promote networking and give room for social activities and breakout sessions. Researchers are encouraged to present unpublished results and the contributions are off-record, that means that nobody is allowed to take photos, record sound or video, or share the presentations on social media. And here I am writing about it.

I attended the Animal-Microbe Symbioses Conference #GRCAnimalSymbioses. I went first and most of all because of the incredible line-up of presenters (almost 50% women). Second, I’ve heard that Gordon Research Conferences are especially family-friendly. I was not disappointed.

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