Brooke Whitelaw led a fantastic study investigating species diversity in the iconic blue-ringed octopus genus, Hapalochlaena. Using genome-wide SNP data and mitochondrial loci, Brooke found 11 relevant taxonomic units - likely all species, suggesting MUCH greater diversity than is currently described! The origin of the genus Hapalochlaena was predicted to ...
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The latest in Antarctic research from the Marine Omics lab, Sally, Ira and Jan used a novel genomic approach to answer if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) had collapsed during the Last Interglacial period, and they did so by looking into the genomic loci of an Antarctic octopus (Pareledone ...
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A new paper by Jia in Molecular Biology and Evolution showcases the power of whole genome sequencing to understand adaptive evolution in corals. Thanks to our collaborators in Western Australia we were able to obtain samples for deep WGS on 75 corals, including samples from the inshore Kimberley reefs and ...
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Jan led a paper with co-authors from Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF) to highlight the utility and power of biological archives to understand past ecological and climatic change in Antarctica. Biological archives included extant moss beds and peat profiles, biological proxies in lake and marine sediments, vertebrate animal colonies, and ...
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New editorial by Sally and Jan in Global Change Biology (full article here), explores the unprecedented environmental risks and consequences that the Southern Ocean is experiencing from current climate change. They also outlined that knowing how benthic fauna persisted through environmental extremes in the past may inform future predictions. Right ...
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New paper by Sally, Catarina and Jan in Ecology & Evolution, uses COI sequences to investigate the population genetic patterns of the Antarctic brittle stars Ophionotus victoriae and O. hexactis with contrasting life histories (broadcasting vs brooding) and morphology (5 vs 6 arms). They found that, throughout the Pleistocene glacial ...
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New paper by Catarina and Jan in Molecular Ecology, (full article here), investigates genome-wide divergence, introgression patterns and inferred demographic history between species pairs of all six extant rock lobster species within the genus Jasus - species with a larval duration of up to two years. Funded by the Australian ...
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New paper by Ira, Jan and Jia in Science Advances (full article here), uses shallow whole genome sequencing to look at demographic history and selection for Acropora tenuis. The main findings are outlined in this tweet thread. Maria Nayfa also made this nice video of Ira explaining why genomes are ...
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Antimicrobial peptides are part of the innate immune system and help defend the host against pathogens and regulate the microbiome. Antimicrobial peptides occur in all life, are incredibly diverse, mostly quite small (< 200 amino acids), and only comprise of a small proportion in a genome (~ 1%). This makes ...
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Throughout the Plio-Pleistocene glacial cycles, the Antarctic ice sheets expanded and contracted repeatedly, which led to the repeated erosion of the Antarctic continental shelf throughout glacial maxima. Even though molecular and paleontological evidence suggests most extant Antarctic benthos persisted in situ in the Southern Ocean during Plio-Pleistocene, where and how ...
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