#population genetics

[biovoice-tmblr]

A New Beginning for a Legendary Bird: Welcoming the First Kākāpō Chick of 2026

Tīwhiri-A1-2026 pictured on its hatch day (above) and at one day old (below) being weighed by Ranger Maddy. Photos |DOC The kākāpō—Aotearoa New Zealand’s charismatic, moss‑green, nocturnal parrot—has just welcomed a precious new arrival. After four long years without a single hatch, the first chick of the 2026 breeding season has made its debut, marking a moment of hope for one of the world’s…

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[er-cryptid]

Alleles in a Population

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[corin-tuckers-left-one]

I just figured out how to subset my data which is much easier and faster than searching through removing everything manually. Really wish I'd known how to do that this time last year 😅

[tributary]

i always thought that the greater frequency of autosomal recessive genetic disorders in certain populations was just because they historically practiced endogamy (think cousin marriage). but ‘population bottlenecking’ can cause members of a group to be more genetically similar to each other. basically if you kill a bunch of people it shows up in the survivors’ genes

[wretched-mog]

Rats are New Yorkers, too! Genome study reveals how rodents conquered the Big Apple

Changes to genes involved in behaviour, diet and mobility might have helped urban rats.

hell yes baybee!!!! finally, some good fucking population genetics

also i C A N N O T believe that this is real:

[samantha-reimagined]

I may have hit some mental wall this week, but I'm really killing it with the after dinner and shower studying.

Pretty much got my take home exam all done, except for a few problems that I need to revisit, but feeling confident. Really going to need to thoroughly review it this weekend to make sure I'm not leaving any information out, hopefully this promises a better grade than the last two.

[currentsinbiology]

Narwhals beat the death sentence of low genetic diversity

Narwhals, medium-size whales that live in the Arctic, are known for some genetic quirks. After multiple studies uncovered low genetic diversity in several narwhal genes, a team of researchers decided to analyze the whale’s entire genome. Using DNA from the frozen liver tissue of a narwhal found near Greenland, they calculated the genetic variation of the species and estimated the population size of narwhals into the deep past.

Their results reveal a profound lack of diversity across the narwhal’s genome, they report today in iScience. Compared with 14 other mammal species, narwhals were far less genetically diverse. For example, bowhead whales have twice as much variation, while pandas’ genomes are more than three times as diverse. What’s more, the team found no evidence of an inbreeding or die-off “bottleneck.” Instead, narwhal populations appear to have declined slowly starting 2 million years ago and have maintained a low genetic diversity for the past million years. Such slowly shrinking diversity has been seen in mountain gorillas and Channel Island foxes, but this time, the common culprits of inbreeding and isolation don’t appear to be to blame.

[lyanderthalstudies]

I've been traveling a lot, going to different grad school interviews so it's been tough to post. It was really cool, and I'll probably make a post about it once it's all done and I have accepted an offer somewhere. Until then, enjoy the pictures I managed to take, 1) view from the window when I was returning home, 2) the cemetery across the street from the hotel one of the schools put me up in, 3) walking around campus at one of the visits.