Lab News

Mike Yuan was awarded the Junea W. Kelly Graduate Fellowship from the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. The fellowship will support the final year of his Ph.D.

Erin Westeen has receive a prestigious NSF graduate research fellowship! The award provides three years of fellowship support that will last through her graduate career.

Led by grad student Mike Yuan and undergrad Catherine Jung, we have a new paper out in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society on the evolution of claw and toepad morphology in anoles. This study takes a look at how competing forces shape the evolution of these ecologically important traits in the anoles of the Lesser Antilles.

Yuan M.L., Jung C.^†, Wake M.H., and Wang I.J. (2020) Habitat use, interspecific competition, and phylogenetic history shape the evolution of claw and toepad morphology in Lesser Antillean anoles. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 129:630-643.

Our new paper on landscape epigenetics in anoles is out in Molecular Ecology. Based on 8,459 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 8,580 single methylation variants (SMVs) from eight populations of the Puerto Rican crested anole, Anolis cristatellus, we compared patterns of genetic and epigenetic variation and found evidence for significant epigenetic isolation by environment (IBE), even after controlling for genetic structure. We also detected significant associations between key environmental variables and 96 SMVs, including 42 located in promoter regions or gene bodies.

Wogan G.O.U., Yuan M.L., Mahler D.L., and Wang I.J. (2020) Genome-wide epigenetic isolation by environment in a widespread Anolis lizard. Molecular Ecology, 29: 40-55.

Erin has been awarded a Liu Fellowship in Environmental Studies from the College of Natural Resources to support the 3rd year of her Ph.D. program.

Ian authored a new R package for calculating shortest topographic distances and topographic least cost paths. The topoDistance package is available from CRAN, and the paper describing the package has been published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Erin Westeen was featured in the Herpetologist Highlight by the Herpetologists’ League. Read her interview to hear her thoughts on science, fieldwork, grad school, and her favorite herps!

Ian’s proposal to the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) has been funded! The grant will provide $899,000 for five years to study evolutionary responses to climate change.

Erin Westeen was awarded a research grant from the Berkeley chapter of Sigma Xi. The grant will support her dissertation work on the evolution of Sceloporus lizards.