On Tuesday 8 November, at 13:15 CET Jenni Prokkola from Academy Research Fellow, Natural Resources Institute (Luke), Finland will be giving a talk about The energetics of life-history variation in Atlantic salmon: a question of resource allocation and genetic constraints. Pioneering genetic association studies have identified genomic regions strongly linked to the enormous life-history variation found in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Jenni will describe how she uses genomic prediction in follow-up empirical studies to test if life history variation in salmon may be constrained by whole animal and tissue-level energetic pathways.

The seminar will be held at Karlstad University House 21, room 349, and also live on zoom at (https://kau-se.zoom.us/my/kaubiology). You are invited to physically attend this seminar at Karlstad University campus building 21 or live on zoom.

On 6 April, Ted Morrow will give a talk entitled “Sexually antagonistic genes in flies and humans”. Sexually antagonistic selection occurs when natural selection on traits shared by males and females operates opposite directions in the two sexes. Sexually antagonistic genetic variation is apparently common and taxonomically widespread and yet very few specific genetic loci have been identified. The talk will give an overview of experimental work that has been carried out in the Morrow lab to find these genes in the fruit fly model as well as ask why no sexually antagonistic genes have been reported from humans.

The seminar starts at 13.15 and will be streamed live over Zoom. Contact Olle Calles (olle.calles@kau.se) to receive the zoom link to this seminar.

On 28 May (tomorrow), Martin Österling, Associate Professor at Karlstad University, will give a seminar titled:

“The genetic structure of mussels with complex life cycles and its relation to host fish migratory trait and density.”

The seminar starts at 13:15 in room 5F416 at Karlstad University. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminar.

Viola elatior and the two habitats used in the study: early successional floodplain meadows and late successional alluvian woodlands. Photos: Benjamin Schulz.

Benjamin Schulz, Walter Durka, Jiří Danihelka and Lutz Eckstein recently published the research paper “Differential role of a persistent seed bank for genetic variation in early vs. late successional stages” in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. In the abstract, the authors write:

“Persistent seed banks are predicted to have an important impact on population genetic processes by increasing effective population size and storing past genetic diversity. Accordingly, persistent seed banks may buffer genetic effects of disturbance, fragmentation and/or selection. However, empirical studies surveying the relationship between aboveground and seed bank genetics under changing environments are scarce. Here, we compared genetic variation of aboveground and seed bank cohorts in 15 populations of the partially cleistogamous Viola elatior in two contrasting early and late successional habitats characterized by strong differences in light-availability and declining population size. Using AFLP markers, we found significantly higher aboveground than seed bank genetic diversity in early successional meadow but not in late successional woodland habitats. Moreover, individually, three of eight woodland populations even showed higher seed bank than aboveground diversity. Genetic differentiation among populations was very strong (ф_ST = 0.8), but overall no significant differentiation could be detected between above ground and seed bank cohorts. Small scale spatial genetic structure was generally pronounced but was much stronger in meadow (Sp-statistic: aboveground: 0.60, seed bank: 0.32) than in woodland habitats (aboveground: 0.11; seed bank: 0.03). Our findings indicate that relative seed bank diversity (i.e. compared to aboveground diversity) increases with ongoing succession and despite decreasing population size. As corroborated by markedly lower small-scale genetic structure in late successional habitats, we suggest that the observed changes in relative seed bank diversity are driven by an increase of outcrossing rates. Persistent seed banks in Viola elatior hence will counteract effects of drift and selection, and assure a higher chance for the species’ long term persistence, particularly maintaining genetic variation in declining populations of late successional habitats and thus enhancing success rates of population recovery after disturbance events.”

Read the paper here!

A threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a fascinating animal likely to be mentioned in both talks.

On Tuesday October 9, two seminars will be held at the biology department at Karlstad University.

Adaptive potential and evolutionary responses to climate change: Arctic char and threespine stickleback in Greenland – Michael Hansen, Professor, Aarhus University

Ecological genetics – What’s it about and how can we use it? – Karl Filipsson, NRRV PhD-student, Karlstad University

The seminars will be held in room 5F416 and start at 13:15. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminars.

I höstas arrangerades FishBase Symposium 2014: Fiskarnas gener på Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet i Stockholm. Flera intressanta föredrag på temat fiskar och genetik gavs. Nu finns de flesta av dessa föredrag tillgängliga online på youtube:

• Thomas Near, Yale University: Fish phylogenies swim into the 21st Century. 
• Krista B. Oke, McGill University: Hybridization between genetically modified Atlantic salmon and wild brown trout.
• Francesc Piferrer, Institute of Marine Sciences: Genetic and environmental components of fish sex determination and differentiation.
• Philip Francis Thomsen, Copenhagen University: Monitoring aquatic biodiversity using environmental DNA.
• Matthias Geiger, Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig: The FREDIE project – different lessons from a large scale DNA barcoding campaign.
• Mats Grahn, Södertörn University: Fishing for population structure with genomic markers. 

Intressant för kalla vinterkvällar!