Lab News

In collaboration with a great group of landscape geneticists, Ian has written a new book chapter on landscape genomics that will appear in the upcoming Population Genomics textbook.

Balkenhol N., Dudaniec R.Y., Krutovsky K.V., Johnson J.S., Cairns D.M., Segelbacher G., Selkoe K., von der Heyden S., Wang I.J., Selmoni O., and Joost S. (2017) Landscape genomics: understanding relationships between environmental heterogeneity and genomic characteristics of populations. in Rajora O.P. (Ed.) Population Genomics (pp.XX-XX). New York: Springer.

Allozymes once ruled the day but have now been all but replaced by modern genotypic markers. However, many collections of allozyme homegenates still exist, and for some species, particularly those of conservation concern, these collections may be the only sources of historical genetic material. Sequencing from allozyme homogenates has often come up short, but Mike Yuan has figured out a simple way to significantly improve sequencing success: just add some trehalose to your PCR reactions. His method is described in Conservation Genetics Resources.

Yuan M.L., Wogan G.O.U., and Wang I.J. (2017) Improved PCR amplification of vertebrate nuclear DNA from historical allozyme homogenates. Conservation Genetics Resources. doi: 10.1007/s12686-017-0811-4

Ian Wang and Brad Shaffer published a new paper on the compatibility of field ecological and population genetic estimates of dispersal and population size in pond breeding salamanders. The paper is now available in Evolutionary Applications.

Wang I.J. and Shaffer H.B. (2017) Population genetic and field-ecological analyses return similar estimates of dispersal over space and time in an endangered amphibian. Evolutionary Applications, 10: 630-639.

Mike Yuan just received a Grant-in-Herpetology from the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles for his project on the evolution of Anolis lizards.

Mike Yuan has been awarded a $2,000 grant from the MVZ’s Louise Kellog Fund, established in 1970 to enhance the MVZ collections. The award will support Mike’s work on morphological evolution in anoles.

Drew Hart has received a grant from Idea Wild to support his epiphyte research in Costa Rica this summer! The grant will be used to purchase a drone that Drew will use to collect epiphytes from the canopy in cloud forests.

Drew Hart has been awarded a Tinker Field Research Grant from the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley. The grant will support his summer field research in Costa Rica.

Mike Yuan was awarded a Rosemary Grant Research Award for $2,400 from the Society for the Study of Evolution.

Mike Yuan has been awarded a Smithsonian graduate student fellowship for summer 2017. He will work at the National Museum of Natural History with Rayna Bell and Kevin de Queiroz on anole morphological evolution.

Ian has published a new paper on urban landscape genetics in collaboration with Andre Lourenco and Guillermo Velo-Anton from CIBIO (Portugal) and David Alvarez from the University of Oviedo (Spain).  The paper examines the effects of urbanization on demography and genetic isolation in fire salamanders in the historical city of Oviedo, a centuries old city in northern Spain.

Lourenco A., Alvarez D., Wang I.J., and Velo-Anton G. (in press) Trapped within the city: Integrating demography, time since isolation and population-specific traits to assess the genetic effects of urbanization. Molecular Ecology.