mastodon 4.7.3Assoc Prof & Assoc Department Head at UofA EEB in Tucson studying #PlantEvolution, #Botany, #Polyploidy, #Chromosomes, #Biodiversity, #Pteridophytes, #Xanthisma, and #Brassica. Enjoys #Boxing and #Whisky. #firstgen #iamabotanist. Views are my own. He/Him
@MikeBarker@ecoevo.social #fedi22
A new preprint from the lab on the distribution of ancient whole-genome duplications across the angiosperm phylogeny. Great work led by PhD student Michael McKibben! We used a variety of methods and different species trees to infer and place WGDs across the phylogeny. Overall, similar results to our past work, but species tree had a large impact on WGD inferences. Check it out here:
A new preprint from the lab testing aspects of a hypothesis that lower chromosome numbers may result from selection to reduce independently assorting incompatibilities. In short, we do not find evidence to support the hypothesis in our analyses. Great work led by PhD student Geoff Finch!
Post-zygotic reproductive isolation is not correlated with chromosome number in plants
In preparation for our first mastodon #Plantsgiving here is an article about the #botanical take on Thanksgiving dinner!
Also worth noting that the last sentence of the article is appropriate for this platform: "So, dig into your pumpkin pie like a mastodon!"
https://research.arizona.edu/stories/thanksgiving-plant-kingdom-reigns-supreme
Our latest preprint on using machine learning to infer WGDs in Ks plots is now up at biorxiv! Check it out below!