RAD-seq in pipefish: a cautionary tale

At one point during my PhD my advisor joked that my dissertation could at least be titled, "RAD-seq in pipefish: a cautionary tale". Luckily, that didn't end up being the case, but my recently-published paper Substantial differences in bias between single-digest and double-digest RAD-seq: a case study comes pretty close.

Understanding the different components of selection

Selection can have trade-offs at many different points during an individual's lifetime, not just between natural and sexual selection. Males and females are often under different selection pressures, and natural selection can also be broken down into different episodes or components. In my most recent paper, I used the selection components analysis approach in a population of pipefish to identify SNPs associated with differential viability in the sexes and to find SNPs associated with sexual selection.

Population genomics: what is it and why should you care?

Population genomics studies shifts in the frequency of alleles (the different varieties of the same gene) throughout the genome. Population genomics impacts many fields of biology, including molecular ecology, evolutionary genetics, conservation genetics, and medical genetics.

Estrogen and its effects on gene expression in pipefish livers

About a month ago my labmate and I published a paper with our advisor titled “The effects of synthetic estrogen exposure on the sexually dimorphic liver transcriptome of the sex-role-reversed Gulf pipefish”. It’s published in an open-access journal, PLoS One, so everyone with internet can access it! However, I wanted to write a more-accessible summary …

First trips out in the boat

I have now been in Sweden for just over a week, and so far I've explored Visby, spent some time in the country, and of course spent some time at the field station and on the boat, collecting fish. We've had some really beautiful weather the past few days, and it really feels like spring!We've gone …