Interpreting the Biodiversity of Your Wardrobe

I love fashion, especially garments with animals on them. I wear so many of them, that my boss asked me about the biodiversity of my closet. I was genuinely curious so I counted all the plants, animals, and any other life forms that I could spot and calculated the Shannon Weiner Index, a real index…

Domestication of Your Jack-O-Lantern

Happy Halloween everyone! As I was walking around the pumpkin patch picking out my Jack-O-Lantern-to-be, I started wondering: where in the world are pumpkins from?!  To be fair, as a phylogeographer it’s my job to wonder where different species came from and what geographic routes they took to arrive at their current distribution.  Usually a…

What is Urban Evolution?

In 2009 the United Nations reported that half of the world’s human population lived in cities and was expected to grow to 66% by 2050.  The movement of people from dispersed living to concentration in urban environments is a large change both for human civilization and for the environment.  Urbanization is the process of changing…

CRISPR for Conservation

I’ve got this feeling that CRISPR is the next PCR.  Have you ever met someone who was an early adopter of PCR?  No, I mean an early adopter of PCR where the technique required three water baths, a swivel chair, a stop watch, and AN ACTUAL PERSON to move the reaction tubes between water baths every…

Marsupial misconceptions: weird mammals, placentas and pouches

I’ve now been living in Australia for almost 18 years, and I’m an unashamed convert to #TeamMarsupial. Marsupials are fascinating animals in both evolutionary and ecological terms, but at times I am surprised by how poorly-understood they are. I’ve been thinking of writing a post to address some recurring marsupial misconceptions for a while. When I saw…

Landmark Studies for Evolution

First up, this post is about using landmarks (on bones) to answer evolutionary questions, not my list of significant papers in evolution*.  Landmarks are points on a specimen (e.g. bones, leafs, etc) that can be identified based on a specific rule (example- widest part of the cheek bone).  I’ve highlighted a few landmarks on two bear…

The Evolutionary Argument against Wildlife Pets

What do sun bears, slow lorises, bobcats, and pythons all have in common? They are all part of the global trade of wildlife for use as pets. And these are only a few of the species kept as pets.  There are no shortage of pieces describing the ecological, conservation, and/or ethical impacts of having wildlife…

Behind the paper: using DNA to define conservation units for endangered dragons

This week, we have a new paper published online in the journal Conservation Genetics, with former Honours student Emma Carlson as lead author. The paper is titled “How many conservation units are there for the endangered grassland earless dragons?” Yes, that’s right, dragons! But not the fire-breathing sort. The grassland earless dragon (Tympanocyrptis pinguicolla) is a…

Guest Post: My trip to Madagascar, and why you should jump on a plane and go now! (Mammals and Birds)

Guest Post by Katy Klymus I am not the type of person that has many regrets. However if you were to ask me a year ago, what regrets I had, the only real one would have to be not going to Madagascar several years ago when I had a chance. The choice has haunted me…

Learning from the Success of the American Chestnut Restoration Project for Species Conservation

The story of the decline of American chestnuts (Castanea dentata) is the stuff of conservationists’ nightmares. First, a magnificent and abundant species provides habitat and an annually stable mast crop (full of protein and fat) for overwintering forest dwellers. The species also serves as a timber product for people. But then the import of a…

Behind the Paper: Bears in Alaska Just Want to Have Fun (Genetics that is)

My paper on the phylogeography of the American black bear (sub) was recently published. Phylogeography is the study of the historic processes that shape the contemporary distribution of a species’ genetic diversity. This means we can reconstruct how species moved across their range to come to their current distribution by looking at their genetics. Populations…

Zebra Stripes: Fashionable and Evolutionarily Functional

In fashion there are black and white stripes, then there are zebra stripes! Immediately recognizable by their organic and wavy form, zebra stripes are a bold choice that can be paired with other prints or as a standalone statement piece. But, whose stripes are you really wearing? There are three zebra species: Plains (Equus quagga),…