Anna I’ve selected three favourite papers from 2018: a research study, a think piece and a technical review. I was really excited to read “Digging mammals contribute to rhizosphere fungal community composition and seedling growth” (subscription) because I’m interested in how conservation management actions – in this case conservation and potential reintroduction of digging mammals…
Author: WildlifeSNPits
What We’re Reading- June 8, 2018
Stakeholders Diverse Interests in Endangered Vulture Conservation The Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) is an endangered bird native across northern Africa, the Middle East, and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. Researchers asked diverse stakeholders including hunters, ranchers, and tourists in northern Spain (the upper range of the vulture’s distribution) about their knowledge of the species…
What We’re Reading- March 2, 2018
Rock Art Natural History Many ecologists are interested in the distribution of species and how community composition changes over time. In the present, we can go into the field and survey for species presence and absence. However, to infer species distributions in the past we either have to have fossils or zooarcheological evidence, or less…
What We’re Reading- Feb 23, 2018
Wallaby Phylogeny Based on both morphological and limited genetic markers, the phylogeny of wallabies was uncertain. This paper (open) sequenced the genomes of 11 species of wallabies and kangaroos and built a multi-locus phylogeny. Three of these species are IUCN listed as “near threatened” (yellow-footed rock wallaby, black wallaroo, and parma wallaby). The authors observed…
What We’re Reading- Feb 9, 2018
A Lion Roars Back Lions have not been observed in Gabon for 20 years, until a camera trap project set up to investigate chimps captured a photo in 2015! The Gabonese government expressed interest in translocating lions into the country to establish a breeding population. One consideration for translocation projects is to move genetically similar…
What We’re Reading – Jan 26, 2018
Temporal Genotyping for Conservation Monitoring This paper advocates using museum specimens to quantify recent losses of genetic diversity in species of conservation concern. The authors note that older demographic processes leave a signature on genetic diversity that can be difficult to distinguish from recent changes. Thus they show how using temporal sampling allows researchers to…
What We’re Reading- Jan 12, 2018
One shark, one global population? We recently highlighted the lack of population genetic studies within marine environments, and noted that the existing ones show exciting results about both barriers and corridors for dispersal. A new paper (open) investigated the global population structure of the blue shark (Prionace glauca). This species has a serious global oceanic…
What We’re Reading- Jan 5, 2018
Happy New Year from the WildlifeSNPits team! All the Pretty Birds This open paper investigated the phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships between Kingfishers, an order of birds with 114 species. Kingfishers are known for their beautiful bright colors, but how the different species are related to each other was partially unknown. The authors inferred that kingfishers…
What We Read- Favorite Papers of 2017
Anna My favourite paper of 2017 was “Devil Tools & Tech: A Synergy of Conservation Research and Management Practice” (open access). This provides a great example of how to effectively bridge the “research-implementation gap” in conservation management. Instead of what could be called the “traditional model”, where scientists conduct and publish research, and only then engage…
Year in Review: What We Wrote 2017
Anna I started a new job in January 2017, moving from a research-focused postdoc to a role with a mix of research and project management, coordinating the Oz Mammals Genomics Initiative. Getting stuck into this has given me less time to spend writing papers (and blogs…) than in previous years, so I’m pretty happy to…
What We’re Reading- Dec 15, 2017
Oyster Adaptation to Ocean Acidification Oceans are a large carbon sink, and one of the effects of climate change is that the oceans are becoming more acidic (see here for a description of how this happens). This changing environment presents a problem for marine species that must acclimate or adapt to living in a more…
What We’re Reading- Nov 3, 2017
Fight During Over-head Flight: Bear Physiological Responses to Drones The drone landscape is rapidly changing as more businesses incorporate drones and attention from hobbyists increases. Drones have also been proposed as a conservation monitoring tool, both for counting elusive species and for surveying/deterring poachers. A group of researchers wanted to know how animals respond when…
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