About the Blog Author: Dr. Tasha Thompson is a conservation geneticist and post-doctoral research associate at Michigan State University in the lab of Dr. Mariah Meek. She works on the genetic and evolutionary basis of adaptive variation in Pacific salmon and applications for conservation. [Note: The following recounts my personal experiences working on salmon run-timing genetics […]
Tag: fish
Behind the Science: Implications of Large-Effect Loci for Conservation
About the blog author: Devon Pearse (he/him) is a research geneticist at the NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center working as part of the Molecular Ecology and Genetic Analysis Team, and adjunct professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz in the Fisheries Cooperative Program. He loves kayaking and rafting adventures on free-flowing […]
EECG Extension: Diving into a hijacked brain – effects of parasitism on threespine stickleback behaviour and brain morphology
**The AGA grants EECG Research Awards each year to graduate students and post-doctoral researchers who are at a critical point in their research, where additional funds would allow them to conclude their research project and prepare it for publication. EECG awardees also get the opportunity to hone their science communication and write posts over their […]
EECG Epilogue: Schistocephalus solidus as a puppet master – Can this parasite manipulate the behavior of its threespine stickleback host?
**The AGA grants EECG Research Awards each year to graduate students and post-doctoral researchers who are at a critical point in their research, where additional funds would allow them to conclude their research project and prepare it for publication. EECG awardees also get the opportunity to hone their science communication and write posts over their […]
EECG Embarkation: Investigating the genomic architecture of speciation via reinforcement
**The AGA grants EECG Research Awards each year to graduate and post-doctoral researchers who are at a critical point in their research, where additional funds would allow them to conclude their research project and prepare it for publication. EECG awardees also get the opportunity to hone their science communication and write three posts over their […]
Do deepwater snappers have wanderlust or remain close to home?
About the author: Sabrina Heiser (she/her/hers) is a PhD Candidate in Dr. Charles D. Amsler’s lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research focuses on the factors driving the geographic distribution of chemical defenses in a red seaweed. For her sample and data collection, she gets to go and SCUBA dive in Antarctica. She […]
Habitat Fragmentation of the Catfish Hemibagrus spilopterus: Dammed If We Do
About the author: Rose Ferguson wrote this post as part of Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield‘s Principles of Scientific Investigation course. She is currently a dual Bachelor’s and Master’s student through the Accelerated Bachelor’s to Master’s program at UAB. She is planning on conducting research in Dr. Dustin Kemp’s lab beginning spring of 2021. With COVID-19 safety […]
Parasite Tagging: A Surprising Identification Strategy in Ecological Research
Say you are studying a population of anadromous fish. These fish live in the ocean and swim upriver to spawn, with each fish returning to the river in which it hatched. The different rivers wind up containing separate subpopulations, as fish from different rivers never interbreed. How can these distinct subpopulations be recognized when the […]
To band or not to band: what drives the expression of fashion accessories in female pipefish?
“Tale as old as time. Female chooses male. Male is large in size. Male has weaponry. Unsurprisingly! Male’s ornamentation. Male’s behavior. Female makes the eggs. Takes care of the young. Male and female roles.”1 But not all the time! 1Adapted from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” written by Howard Ashman As the female is usually […]
Revealing ancient hybridization’s role in diversification
Hybridization between closely related species is a rapidly emerging field of interest for evolutionary biologists, and the more scientists look for signals of hybridization (with ever fancier tools), the more we learn that hybridization is the norm rather than the exception (Payseur & Rieseberg 2016). While young species pairs tend to hybridize more readily than […]