Month: September 2019

From coast to continent: how our freshwater biota travelled across the landscape

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The Australian aquascape

To anyone who has lived within Australia for a given period time, and likely many from across the globe, it is clear that water is a precious resource. Rainfall across much of the continent is patchy and variable, and the availability of water is a critical aspect in the distribution, survival and evolution of many Australian species. Expectedly, these aspects play an even bigger role for those taxonomic groups that heavily rely on the presence of water; freshwater-dependent taxa such as fish, amphibians or aquatic invertebrates show a keen evolutionary relationship with water across the landscape.

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Scanning for causes: an introduction to genome-wide association studies

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Understanding genetic determinants

You’ve probably been exposed to one news headline or another in the recent past (let’s say the last 5 years) that reads something like “SCIENTISTS DISCOVER GENES THAT CAUSE (X).” X, of course, varies massively based on the study itself (and sometimes the bastardisation of said study by media): it can include describing medical conditions such as cancer, autism or congenital diseases; behavioural traits, such as sexual preferences; or broad physical traits, such as the classic problem of the inheritability of height. Unsurprisingly, you may think that trying to find the genes responsible for some traits should be either a) super easy, or b) super hard, depending on your own philosophical preference or the trait in question. So how do these studies come about, anyway?

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