Nick’s Blog

Nicholas G. Crawford, Jaime Zaldívar-Rae, Cris Hagen, Amanda Schable, Erica Bree Rosenblum, Jeff A. Graves, Tod W. Reeder, Michael G. Ritchie, Travis C. Glenn. 2007. Thirteen polymorphic microsatellite DNA loci from whiptails of the genus Aspidoscelis (Teiidae: Squamata) and related cnemidophorine lizards. Molecular Ecology Notes. In Press.

Nicholas G. Crawford, Cris Hagen, Heather F. Sahli, Elizabeth A. Stacy, Travis C. Glenn. 2007. Fifteen polymorphic microsatellite loci from Hawaii’s Metrosideros polymorpha (Myrtales: Myrtaceae), a model species for ecology and evolution. Molecular Ecology Notes. In Press.

This past Wednesday members of the SREL DNA lab, including myself, collected four Green Anoles (Anolis carolinensis). These anoles will be used to make BAC libraries as part of the Anolis genome project (PDF). We were lucky to enjoy some sunny 60 degree weather as a cold snap lifted. Additionally, we needed male anoles. Males have both sex chomosomes and will provide a more complete genetic map than female anoles. Again luck was on our side - all the anoles we caught were male. A truely fortuitous day.

I came across this really nice post by Razib on his Gene Expression blog. It’s a quick and dirty review of all those population genetics equations I’ve started to forget, or in some instances, never properly understood in the first place!

Evolution Societies:

• Society for the Study of Evolution
• Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
• Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution
• European Society for Evolutionary Biology
• Sociedad Española de Biología Evolutiva
• Association pour l’Etude de l’Evolution Biologique
• Societa’ Italiana di Biologia Evoluzionistica
• International Organization of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology
• Australasian Evolution Society

Also Evolutionary in Nature:

• American Society of Naturalists
• Genetics Society
• Linnean Society
• Ecological Genetics Group
• Human Behavior and Evolution Society
• Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
• International Society for Evolutionary Protistology
• National Center for Science Education
• Worldwide Network for Evolutionary Biology

Primarily Geology and Paleontology:

• Paleontological Society
• Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
• Geological Society of America
• Paläontologische Gesellschaft

Primarily Systematics:

• Society of Systematic Botanists
• Systematics Association
• Société Française de Systématique
• Swiss Systematics Society
• Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik
• Polish Taxonomical Society
• Systematics Association of NZ
• South African Society for Systematic Biology (web page??)
• Society of Australian Systematic Botanists
• Bay Area Biosystematists
• Willi Hennig Society

Via Evolution Directory, list originally collated by Graham Wallis and Gisella Caccone

Figtree (version 1.0) is a neat little application for viewing and manipulating trees. It is quite similar to TreeView, but Figtree incorporates a number of improvements including a cleaner UI, easier viewing of node labels, and an excellent method for collapsing branches. The later function should be particularly useful for generating figures for publication and for working with large trees containing 100+ taxa. Figtree’s main weakness is that it lacks a method for defining outgroups (it provides midpoint rooting only). Despite this qualification, I still highly recommend Figtree. Hopefully, future releases will address the rooting issue.