Words Matter A thought provoking opine which asks scientists if we’re being too careful with our words? The authors discuss how the use of euphemisms to describe environmental challenges, scientific results, and interpretation/recommendations undermines conservation objectives, specifically of changing human behaviors. They also challenge scientists to understand how we internalize euphemisms to justify our work…
Tag: Evolution
What We’re Reading- April 7, 2017
Detecting Disease from Skin Swabs Chytrid (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) is a fungal disease causing amphibian die offs around the world (we wrote about it here). Given its wide distribution both on hosts and geographically, there’s no surprise that there is genomic variation. Scientists are interested in this variation to understand virulence, host specificity, and patterns of…
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…
Making Science Real in Non-Majors Science Class
For the longest time, I complained about teaching one class, non-majors biology. While many teaching assistants complained about students, for me, it was the content I was teaching. The problem wasn’t that it was too simple and not advanced like in a majors class, it was that it was not relevant to the students’ lives (or…
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…
What We’re Reading: Jan 15, 2016
Paternal sex allocation: how variable is the sperm sex ratio? Think back to the classes you took on cell division. You might recall that in male mammals, meiosis is an important part of spermatogenesis. Chromosomes in diploid cells separate as the cell splits in two: one half gets the X chromosome the other the Y. So this means…
What We Read: Favorite Papers of 2015
Part two of our Year in Review: we describe our favorite papers of 2015. These papers did not necessarily have to have been part of our Friday link dump series, What We’re Reading, which focuses on the WildlifeSNPIts theme of the intersection between evolution and conservation. Anna I’m terrible at picking favourites, but after a…
What We’re Reading: Oct 16, 2015
Bushbaby BMI A new study reports that bushbabies (Galago moholi) in urban environments have higher body-mass indexes (BMI) and stress hormone levels than their rural counterparts. The authors also observed higher use of human food and less movement in the urban primates. Their results show how urbanization can impact the health of wild animals. How…
What we’re reading: Nov 21, 2014
Captive Breeding and Mate Choice Captive breeding is one conservation strategy both for species preservation but also for potential release of individuals into the wild for increasing population size and/or genetic diversity. This paper examined the breeding patterns of mice which were captively bred for three generations before being released with wild mice. The authors…
Ecological Genomics 2014 Themes
I just got back from Kansas State University’s 12th Ecological Genomics Symposium (EcoGen2014, this year with Twitter hashtag #ecogensymp). I covered the themes from last year’s meeting and wanted to do the same this year. The themes I keyed in on from 2014 included: the importance of phenotyping and how genomics informs managed species. Phenotypes…
What we’re reading: Oct 24, 2014
Evolutionary Conservation Since the premise of this blog is write about evolution, conservation, and their intersection, the thesis of this article (open), that evolution can inform conservation, is nothing new to us! The authors layout the links between these two disciplines nicely and give researchers ideas for a path forward in evolutionary conservation. Ecotype Evolution…
What we’re reading: Aug 8, 2014
Hybrid Songbirds use Hybrid Migration Routes Neat new paper (open) shows that hybrids between two subspecies of Swainson’s thrushes, show intermediate migration routes from the parental species. Additionally, the authors estimate that selection against hybrids is strong and postulate if migration may constitute an ecological pressure driving speciation. Many Genes of Small Effect This blog…
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