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Bluegrass and Charlie hanging out in Florida.
Conservation, Science
This is the first entry in Crowdsourcing ConGen. This entry is meant to be half of an Introduction which lays out the framework for what conservation genetics is, its philosophical basis in population genetics, and why it’s a meaningful method of inquiry for conservation. This first section is meant to outline foundational concepts in population genetics. It is not meant to be a detailed summery of population genetics, but needs to be accurate and clear.
Read More “The Conservation Context in Population Genetics, Part 1” »
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Researching rural development in coastal communities presents a lot of land mines. I’ll let you imagine and populate that list yourself. Each one of those things deserves its own blog entry at least, or perhaps even a book. But one topic above all others permeates both my personal life and my dissertation research – climate change.
Yes, there are the newly minted signs in my neighborhood declaring the area under the “high water” mark. There’s also the friend who advised me against purchasing a house not because of financial concerns but because said house may be under water soon. There’s also the shift in local fishery species on which the community depends. But let’s set aside the physical realities for a moment…
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Conservation genetics provides essential information for the management and protection of species and ecosystems. Despite it wide applicability and concrete, quantifiable output, very few people in management and policy making positions, as well as in the general public, understand what conservation genetics is and how it can be used. Concepts like F-statistics, effective harmonic population size, the coalescent, along with a host of complex and convoluted equations tend to make the literature impenetrable. Add to that an ever changing host of molecular markers – allozymes, AFLPs,RFLPs, SNPs, microsatellites, mtDNA, 28s, and others – each with their own methods, assumptions, and caveats, and the field becomes almost unapproachable, even to other geneticists.
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Erin and Charlie post #MMISS
Science
It’s been a long time since we’ve reposted this video. Even Osedax needs some love.
Hundred-leven to 1, Polyandry like Crazy!
~Southern Fried Scientist
Lyrics below the jump:
Science
The piracy situation in Somalia is a terrible human tragedy. That’s why when conservationist Joni Lawrence said that it was great because it helped fish stocks to recover, people like myself and Blogfish author Mark Powell got angry. As it turns out, Joni Lawrence wasn’t just being horribly insensitive- she was wrong.
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Charlie and Maria after the #MMISS talk.
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The interwebs are abuzz with glowing reviews for Rebecca Skloot’s new book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. I’m currently #37 on the library reserve list (sorry, Rebecca, but I’m a poor grad student and I can’t afford to buy it). The book tells the story of the HeLa cell line, which are cells that were taken from a patient without her consent. These cells have led to important medical breakthroughs. But how isolated of an incident is this?
Read More “Ethical debate: Patient consent and medical progress” »
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Digging through my old hard drive this morning, I found this image. Yes, this is the boat. So here’s the deal: Submit your best stories to Bluegrass Blue Crab’s Ocean Story Slam. For every week we don’t get a submission, I’m going to post a picture of a hog lagoon. You have been warned. ~Southern … Read More “Not So Happy Humpday” »