Thanks to artificial barriers by Microsoft, companies and consumers are expected to dump millions of perfectly usable computers.
Its time to step away from the Microsoft monopoly and take back ownership of your property! Any #Windows computer/laptop up to 12 years old is supported by modern #Linux operating systems and applications. Enjoy the latest features and security updates by the global Linux community for many years to come.
#ewaste #opensource #reuse #forcedobsolescence

As far back as 1888, people have been skeptical as to whether the bumble bee Bombus sonorus should be recognized as a separate species or a subspecies or variety of Bombus pensylvanicus. We attempt to put that to rest using genetic data of bees from a broad area of sympatry. Spoiler alert...they are genetically distinct and there's no evidence that they're hybridizing.
https://jhr.pensoft.net/article/132937/
#Bombus #BumbleBees #Bees #NaturalHistory

In our most recent publication we evaluated the Rio Grande silvery minnow mtDNA diversity from tempral data by laveraging nextRAD sequencing data to find mtDNA fragments. We found more than we were expecting; in several cases we were able to assemble the complete or nearly complete mitogenome. Check it out: https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blae081

You will experience climate change through a series of increasingly wild videos, until one day it's you taking the video.

#climatechange

Our last article on the genomics of reproductive isolation in the late stages of speciation (Molecular Ecology). Selection against introgression is strong and results from many interacting barriers across the genome, but are particularly strong on sex chromosomes. And there's more: important pre-mating barriers(?), a moving hybrid zone, potential positive selection, no mtDNA introgression, incongruences between genomic and geographic clines.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.17035

The final version of our paper where we made available the first draft Rio Grande silvery minnow genomes, a female and a male, discovered sex-linked markers and uncovered the sex determination system in this species is now available on-line. https://academic.oup.com/jhered/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jhered/esad039/7205203?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

Despite supportive breeding in the last 20 years, we found evidence for loss of genetic diversity in Rio Grande silvery minnow in the last 10 years, after several consecutive years of severe drought.

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.14154

The worst thing about this Musk vs Zuck thing is it's making people root for Zuck. STOP IT, FIND ENOUGH SPACE IN YOUR HEART TO VISCERALLY HATE BOTH OF THEM

Starting soon our symposium dedicated to graduate and early-career research in genetics and genomics at #AFS2023 Grand Rapids, Michigan.

We’re seeking MSc/PhD Students🐟🧬
The Turner Aquatic Conservation Lab (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA) is seeking students interested in (but not limited to) fresh water fish biology, population/conservation genomics, bioinformatics. We have been developing genomic tools (currently on different stages of development for several species) that can be applied to SW freshwater desert fish conservation including RADseq, GTseq, genome sequencing.
Contacts here: https://www.tacl.online/

#ClimateChange #Environment

Online now: Replaying the evolution of multicellularity https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(23)00209-4?rss=yes&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Exciting work from Chloe Mikles' undergraduate thesis is finally out in
conservation genetics! Chloe sequenced whole genome sequences from 39 Song Sparrows in the San Francisco Bay Area
to explore the genetic basis of local adaptation and adaptive capacity among the 5 subspecies
found in the region.

Evolutionary divergence and adaptive capacity in morphologically distinct song sparrow subspecies
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10592-023-01547-w

#ornithology #ConservationGenomics #sparrows
#saltmarshes

Now accepting symposium proposals for #Evol2024 with @eseb, @ASNAmNat, and @SystBiol in Montreal! This meeting will be a mix of the Evolution and ESEB meeting formats. Submit your proposal by September 1! @evol_mtg

https://www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display/2023/8/9/now-accepting-symposium-proposals-for-evolution-2024/

I'm sharing here a wide range of resources and advice that has helped me as I delved into climate action and work as an academic; please share widely!

https://gracewlindsay.com/2023/08/04/so-youre-an-academic-who-wants-to-help-with-the-climate-crisis/

#academia #climatechange #climatecrisis #climate

Returning to my original point, which I lost sight of almost immediately: I wish we would stop referring to plants by the gendered terms we invented to refer to ourselves. Plants don't have genders, and thinking they do has caused a surprising amount of misery.

A happier postscript: to this day, there's a strong tradition of female botanical illustrators in Europe and the UK; I know plenty personally, all the masters are women. As has always been the case, people are resilient in the face of oppression, and so things improve and times change - though the past echoes on forever.

By the way, the mindblowing volume, "Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba", which was discovered only a few years ago, can be viewed here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924100271489

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Just one example: the mindblowing volume that botanist Anne Wollstonecraft wrote in the 1820s in Cuba, only permissable because she did so under the guise of being an illustrator - beside making exquisite illustrations and detailed descriptions, she interviewed the indigenous people of Cuba and wrote about the ways in which they saw and used plants. Something a gentleman explorer would never ever do! The book was never published, only a single (!) hand-written (!!!) volume exists. It makes one weep at what could have been, had women been permitted to participate in this sexy, horny field of botany. How much richer we could all have been, how much more complete our understanding of the world. All because we had to frontload the whole thing with our own prejudices and sexist nonsense.

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Here's a botanical gripe that drives me up the wall every so often: using gendered terms for plants. We talk about male and female parts and while reproduction-wise it's understandable how it got to be that way, it's actually massively unhelpful because people can't stop themselves from having all these connotations of gender roles, just like they do for people, but for plants. Which isn't just my conjecture - historically, women were prohibited from being botanists because of these gendered ideas, because of female eggs being impregnated by pollen from male parts, flowers with anthers and styles being described as a bed with so many men and so many women... it was all considered far too hot and steamy for the suggestible female mind.

Which is why for centuries, European women were generally only able to enter the field of botany by becoming illustrators. Most great botanical illustrators from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were women.

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It's kind of beautiful that the American "symbol of supreme power and authority", the bald eagle, is regularly chased off by the communal efforts of hyper-intelligent goth birds.

The final version of our paper where we made available the first draft Rio Grande silvery minnow genomes, a female and a male, discovered sex-linked markers and uncovered the sex determination system in this species is now available on-line. https://academic.oup.com/jhered/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jhered/esad039/7205203?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false