In more fishy news, this week the latest (and last!) chapter of my PhD, describing how millions of years of climatic stability have allowed isolated and divergent lineages of pygmy perches to persist, was published (Open Access) in Heredity. It covers population divergence, phylogenetic relationships (including estimation of divergence times), species delimitation and projections of species distributions from the past (up to three million years ago) into the future (up to 2100). Some highlights include:
Continue readingpopulation genetics
Validating vulnerability: ground-truthing projections from genomic offsets
How can we predict which species will adapt to climate change?
Across the globe, threatened species are already becoming impacted by the effects of climate change. While we understand many of the characteristics that make a species particularly vulnerable to climate change – those with small ranges, fragmented populations, or long lifespans, for example – predicting the capacity of a given species to respond remains a challenge. Developing analytical approaches and science-based frameworks to predict adaptive capacity in all species is a critical step forward for conservation management.
Continue readingWhat’s new in 2022?
Welcome to 2022! Boy, the last two years have not been overly kind…but here’s hoping that things (globally) will improve! Here, I thought it would just give a little recap about what’s been happening on my end, and what to expect from me (and The G-CAT) in 2022.
Continue readingA simplified guide to genomic vulnerability
Predicting the future for biodiversity
Conservation biology is frequently referred to as a “crisis discipline“, a status which doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon. Like any response to a crisis, biologists of all walks of life operate under a prioritisation scheme – how can our finite resources be best utilised to save as much biodiversity as possible? This approach requires some knowledge of both current vulnerability and future threat – we need to focus our efforts on those populations and species which are most at-risk of extinction in the near (often immediate) future.
Continue readingIncomplete lineage sorting through Pachinko – a visual analogy
Reconstructing evolutionary history
Unravelling the evolutionary history of organisms – one of the main goals of phylogenetic research – remains a challenging prospect due to a number of theoretical and analytical aspects. Particularly, trying to reconstruct evolutionary patterns based on current genetic data (the most common way phylogenetic trees are estimated) is prone to the erroneous influence of some secondary factors. One of these is referred to as ‘incomplete lineage sorting’, which can have a major effect on how phylogenetic relationships are estimated and the statistical confidence we may have around these patterns. Today, we’re going to take a look at incomplete lineage sorting (shortened to ILS for brevity herein) using a game-based analogy – a Pachinko machine. Or, if you’d rather, the same general analogy also works for those creepy clown carnival games, but I prefer the less frightening alternative.
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The G-cat 