Behavioral Ecology Blog

Inspired by a comment to this postEDIT: See Discussion over at Gene Expression
I argue no… Not unless we can all have thermal cyclers at home… end even then- probably not.
The most reliable way to establish paternity is via microsatellite genotyping. RFLP/allozyme/other methods have serious problems with resolution, repeatability, cost, safety etc. To establish paternity [...]

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Male Chimpanzees Prefer Mating with Old Females
In a recent paper, (Current Biology, November, 2006) the authors show that in chimpanzees, males prefer older females as mates. They explain this as an effect of promiscuity- and lack of pair bond. This is in conflict with multiple studies of diverse taxa that show males generally [...]

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Despite being one of the hottest fields- Neanderthal genomics is still very much in its infancy. The problem of modern-human-DNA contamination of ancient samples is a HUGE problem, and currently insurmountable. I am not sure how these papers claiming introgression can really deal with this… How can they say that there results are due [...]

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See the Nature News Story here , and the paper here.
For those of you who don’t know, the Tripoli Six is a group of 5 nurses and 1 MD that are accised of transmitting HIV to ~400 children while working in Libya. The data and analyses presented in the above references clears them- but is [...]

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A few interesting stories…
Intelligent Children more likely to be vegetarian Interesting report, but I suspect that something like socio-economic status or vegetarian status of parents will be more predictive. It does make for a nice pro-vegetarian argument though..
One Gene 90 Percent Responsible For Making Common Parasite Dangerous I wonder why strong counterselection within the [...]

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I’ve been thinking about something for a long time- well, last semester, and figure you all might have something to say about it…
In a nutshell- many researchers use Fst (or Rst) as a measure of population differentiation, i.e., do animals from location A belong to the same population as animals from location B. Fst can [...]

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A guy Over at Gene Expressions posted the following challenge:
List 10 things you think everyone should know about evolution.
Here is my list…

Evolution is inevitable. (i.e. humans are evolving)
Evidence strongly supports the idea that the earth is more than (insert biblical age of choice) years old.
There are 4 predominate mechanisms:

Natural Selection
Genetic Drift
Gene flow
Mutation

Charles Darwin did not [...]

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20 Million Years and a Farewell
A Cetacean, the baiji, has officially been declared extinct. It once inhabited the Yangtze River in China.

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Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.- Theodosius Dobzhansky
Why do people have such difficulty with evolution- religious fanatics aside? Even “believers” are so ofter wrong.. For some insight into people’s general understanding, I went to yahoo answers. There, people ask questions and “experts” (I use this term VERY [...]

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The velvet mite. I took this photo in early Sept, 2006 after a hard rain.
  

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