Previous journal clubs - Page 5

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:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/13-0778.1/full

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)

This Friday the 1st of April we will discuss a paper by Thurman and Barrett (2016): "The genetic consequences of selection in natural populations." Hope to see you there!

Traditional population models are often limited to the female half of the population, but acknowledgement of the importance of males is spreading. There are fundamental differences between male and female demographies, and these differences can strongly affect population dynamics and provide important insights into the evolution of life histories.

In this upcoming session, we will be discussing a recent paper dealing with sex-specific demography and its abilities to inform life history theory:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7572/abs/nature14968.html

This Friday the 18th of March we will discuss an EvoDevo paper by Levin et al. 2016: "The mid-developmental transition and the evolution of animal body plans”.

Please mind the change of location, we will be permanently moving to the "Aquarium" (3rd floor, 3302). 

This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper on Hybridization and Genome Stabilization by Schumer et al. 2016 (Molecular Ecology)

This Friday the 11th of March we will be discussing mass extinctions and a paper from Barnosky et al. 2011: "Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?".

Please mind the change of location, we will be permanently moving to the "Aquarium" (3rd floor, 3302). 

Usually, we model demographic rates and use them to make inferences about population-level processes. The idea of doing the reverse - using population time-series to make conclusions about demographic rates - is not new, but challenging and bound by many assumptions.

In this session, we will discuss a very recent paper on reverse parameter estimation using IPM methodology, to see what new developments have been made for this idea.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.12519/abstract

This thursday, at the Speciation Journal Club, we will discuss a paper on Genomics of Rapid Incipient Speciation in Sympatric Threespine Stickleback, by Marques et al. 2016