Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
A couple fun things going on at the Duke Marine Lab by way of the blogosphere. Legendary Duke Marine Lab professor Dr. Dan and his undergrads have made an appearance over at Wild Shores of Singapore during their Urban Tropical Ecology class field trip to Singapore. Yes, we run very good field trips. The Climate … Read More “Tuesday Morning Blogaerobics” »
The dinosaur saliva studying nobel laureates suffer an outbreak of Pseudocoralliilyticus pseudovibrii? And was that a monster bursting out of the door? Don’t forget to submit your Ocean Story Slam, and thank Pam for saving you for this week’s edition of “pictures from hog lagoons“. ~Southern Fried Scientist
Charlie enjoys the view from the sawgrass.
Charlie gears up to go adventuring on the Mini-Beagle. Find out about the new Beagle here.
Charlie hangs out with a juvenile Monarch Butterfly.
Bluegrass and Charlie hanging out in Florida.
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” »
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…
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.
Erin and Charlie post #MMISS
