Journal clubs - Page 6
Traditionally, population models are often built using only the female half of a population and males are considered nothing but "ecological noise". However, males do matter, and particularly so when there is sex-selective harvest going on.
This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper entitled
"Rapid evolutionary response to a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils" by Epstein et al. 2016 (Nature Communications).
No reading required! We will be watching a video lecture by Bruce M.S. Campbell, author of "The Great Transition: Climate, Disease, and Society in the Late-Medieval World," where he discusses how changes in climate, the economy, and warfare contributed to the onset and severity of plague epidemics in Medieval Europe.
This Firday at the journal club we will discuss a paper by Arnold & Houck (2016): "Can the Fisher‐Lande process account for birds of paradise and other sexual radiations?".
Population matrix models have come a long way and perturbation analyses developed for them are among the most powerful tools of population ecologists. Most population projections are unthinkable without sensitivity analyses and LTREs (Life Table Response Experiments). Population projections are also most needed when climates are changing and habitats are altered, and that is when classic perturbation analyses for equilibrium systems fail.
In a recent paper, Koons et al. explore how to do LTREs in a transient world:
This journal club we will be discussing conflicting studies on two virulence factors that are important for the Yersinia genus, invasin and YadA.
The journal club is back from summer vacations and we`ll dive into species diversification with the latest paper from Lewitus & Morlon (2016): "Natural constraints to species diversification". Join us!
The recent emergence of plague, Yersinia pestis, as a flea-borne pathogen in the last 3,000-6,000 years provides a compelling example of how evolutionary changes can lead to a new bacterial pathogen. We will discuss the recent review, "Ecological opportunity, Evolution, and the Emergence of Flea-borne Plague," by Hinnebusch et. al., about Y. pestis and the closely related enteric pathogen, Y. psuedotuberculosis.
Historical records can provide useful insights into the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of infectious diseases of the past. We will discuss the recently published paper, "Epidemiological analysis of the Eyam plague outbreak of 1665-1666," by L.K. Whittles and X. Didelot, where they used parish records to study the transmission mode and seasonality of plague during a well-known epidemic.
This week we read a paleobioogical paper by Kiessling and Kocsis on Biodiversity dynamics and environmental occupancy of fossil azooxanthellate and zooxanthellate scleractinian corals. Paleobiology, 41, pp 402-414
This Friday the 17th of June we will discuss a recent paper by Green & Sharpe (2015): "Positional information and reaction-diffusion: two big ideas in developmental biology combine".
Hope to see you there!
This Friday the 10th of June we will discuss a recent paper by Lawing et al. (2016): "Community functional trait composition at the continental scale: the effects of non-ecological processes."
Hope to see you there!
This Friday the 3rd of June we will discuss a recent paper by Arif et al (2013): "Genetic and developmental analysis of differences in eye and face morphology between Drosophila simulans and Drosophila mauritiana".
Hope to see you there!
Trait-based demographic models such as IPMs relate not only future adult size but also offspring size to the current size of an individual. This is in stark contrast to the quantitative genetic approach, and may have consequences for the predictions of evolutionary dynamics.
We look into this issue with a recent paper from Chevin:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.12389/full
This Friday the 13th of May we will discuss a recent paper by Chevin (2016): "Species selection and random drift in macroevolution".
Hope to see you there!
In a recent session, discussion rose about reproductive value and fitness. In fact, there is much controversy concerning definitions, and while the definition of reproductive value is relatively straightforward, its interpretation, in particular as a fitness measure, is more confusing.
For this session, we want to look a bit more into that topic, starting off with Jacob Moorad's recent paper:
This Friday the 29nd of April we will discuss a recent paper by our former CEES colleague Mark Grabowski : "Bigger brains led to bigger bodies?: The correlated evolution of human brain and body size". You can read some of the press cover about the article here.
Come discuss the evolution of our genus!
This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper entitled "Ancient horizontal transfers of retrotransposons between birds and ancestors of human pathogenic nematodes"
by Suh et al. 2016 (Nature Communications)
This Friday the 22nd of April we will discuss a paper by Kaji et al. (2016): "Functional transformation series and the evolutionary origin of novel forms: evidence from a remarkable termite defensive organ".
Hope to see you there!
Population models such as IPM's allow the inclusion of continuous traits for demographic analysis, and therefore the tracking of phenotypic change over time. Especially in the case of rapid phenotypic change, it was therefore only a matter of time until methods were developed to identify the sources of such change as evolution, plasticity or demography. One such method is the age-structured Price equation, developed by Coulson & Tuljapurkar in the paper we are discussing this session:
"The Dynamics of a Quantitative Trait in an Age-structured Population Living in a Variable Environment" (Coulson & Tuljapurkar 2008)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/591693
This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper entitled
"Determining epistatic selection in admixed populations" by Schumer and Brandvain 2016 (Molecular Ecology)
This Friday the 15th of April we will discuss a paper by Benson et al. (2016): "Near-Stasis in the Long-Term Diversification of Mesozoic Tetrapods".
Hope to see you there!
This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper entitled
"Excavating Neandertal and Denisovan DNA from the genomes of Melanesian individuals" by Vernot et al. 2016 (Science)
This Friday the 8th of April we will discuss a paper by Mueller and Newman (2005): "The innovation triad: an EvoDevo agenda".
Hope to see you there!
This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper on Genomic introgression in sticklebacks by Yoshida et al. 2016 (Ecology and Evolution)