what's up my natty scientists? let's talk about our fields and our research.
im also an evolutionary bio researcher (specifically phylogenetic comparative models, but I dabble in pop gen, ornithology and herpetology) so I'll answer evolution questions too
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Any good resources for analytical/org chemistry? No idea what I'm doing in this course
Currently finishing up my paper on behavioural plasticity (and it's evolutionary constraints) in the male guppy. Submit for publication in the next week or so.
any reason it's only the male guppy (also, species)? what was the trait you were observing? lemme hear your spiel
I'm a postdoc working with invasive insects that target agricultural crops. My academic background is focused on ecology and I have extensive experience with field work, quantitative methods, and R programming.
How many jobs are in phylogenetics?
I am working on a mathematical model of a disease, and have to give a talk to an audience of physicians.
How much math do doctors know? Should I go into some details of the model, or just gloss over them and focus on the results?
Give the details as appropriate. What kind of model are you using? Something like an SIR model can be easily explained without going into too much detail.
It's not about the spread of disease, it's about the inflammatory mechanisms that determine a disease. It's a system of PDEs. Do doctors evem know what a PDE is?
I suspect some do, but I wouldn't be surprised if you can see some glazing over if you begin to get into the details. I'd focus my discussion of the model on the parameters that will most interest them in order to make it as relevant/engaging a discussion as possible.
Thanks.
Geneticsfag here. How much has the free fall cost of gene sequencing influenced the work you do? I was just checking recently, and the amount of animals that have full genomes available online is staggering to me.
I would love to see (and maybe even start a project) to create a sort of online global phylogeny that has every species cataloged on it, with physiological and genomic data for each species profiled. To be honest, that kind of project would be a dream- but I don't know of any "phylogenomes" that try to categorize the minutia of species level relationships, only species within classes and subclasses, or classes within phyla and the like.
Also taking a course on invertebrate zoology this quarter, never could quite understand. What sets the difference between phyla? Of course it's based on synapomorphies, but I don't really know why the 'size' of the groups are the way they are.
Bold/shy behaviours. Only used males because female behaviour can be impacted by reproductive cycles and that's too hard to control for and also, from an evolutionary history perspective, only males really had the drive to explore new environments (which were testing) as they spend their entire lives actively looking for mating opportunities.
Basically gives you a better basis for testing bold/shy spectrum behaviour.
if you have competent R skills, and/or can handle big genomic data then it's a niche but sizeable field. pretty comfy too
first of all, great questions.
the availability of full-genome (and even partial genome) data for so many taxa has really changed the game. although the foundation of the "new" subfield of phylogenomics is a bit shaky, almost everything I do (currently modelling adaptive traits) is informed by multiple genomic data available online/from colleagues. it's impressive how much information I can get in a simple .fasta file (im talking decades of genomic research in one file). the way we organize taxa is pretty rapidly changing, and I think that's a good thing.
a lot of people have tried doing that! look at the open tree of life, for example. what you're describing is a bit more complete and a dream project for many systematic biologists. pursue it!
it really depends how your tree is created. there are multiple parameters and models you can use to infer (and also constrain) a phylogeny, and it can change depending on what you choose (which ultimately comes from informative characters -- fossil data for instance).
I would recommend downloading mega and mesquite to mess around with different phylogenetic models (which you can make from public genetic data!).
doctors have a frighteningly limited understanding of models/params/stats, I would give summaries and if someone asks then go into it.
looking forward to see it mate
post a link when finished
Do I really need to get a PhD before I can get jobs in Population Genetics? From what I looked into everyone wants a Doctorate
Thanks for the response. I'm always super excited to talk to people on Veeky Forums who are into biology and ecology because most of them are cool and passionate as hell.
There are a lot of '-omics' type "fields" that are sort of becoming more solidified, from my peripheral knowledge of things. It's probably going to be hit and miss what sticks for the coming decades, but apart from things like phylogenomics, you have various types of interactomics (ribo-interactomics for example I think may become pretty big. Recently, researchers [see: Barna lab] have discovered and fleshed out that there are different types of ribosomes expressed differently in developmental stages that control rate-of-translation of hosts of proteins they're specialized for), connectomics, and a few others.
Thanks for the data tools! I don't really know why, but I always get really excited and I feel like a kid in a candy store when presented with really cool analytic tools and models. Having lots of data to work with and manipulate just feels good for some reason. Do you work with PAML? It seems like a really interesting way to approach to sort of working with active evolution and the like, as well as historical, but I'm only aware of the theory behind it.
I'm graduating with an ecology and evolutionary bio undegrad degree.
Is there any way I could research animals without going to grad school?
I thought I was the only one on here, but it's nice to find some others here on Veeky Forums
I had no idea about the Barna lab ribosomal stuff, that has a lot of implications for all kinds of things in evo and behavioral fields -- wow!
I get that "candy store" feeling too, it drives me most of the time (especially getting fresh new data or learning a brand new technique/package, oof). I don't really use PAML so much anymore. There are better tree-builders and Bayesian models for a lot of what I do -- I never found too much use for it. BEAST has an incredibly robust method of utilizing historical data, and it's a blast to use. Lots of people still use PAML in the field tho.
What specifically does "working with animals" mean to you?
sorry, meant:
>researching
Lol yeah you can hang around the grad students and do all their bitch work "volunteering" in a lab "for the experience"
Or you could just get over the idea of going back to school again and do what you love.
Check out the ECOLOG list serv. There are usually several job postings looking for research technicians with BS experience level.
Like discovering new things about the natural world in a partial lab/partial fieldwork setting.
I've had a lot of tech jobs so far and I love doing that but I would like to do my own stuff eventually.
I wouldn't volunteer in a lab because I could easily just be hired as a tech somewhere.
also
>Or you could just get over the idea of going back to school again and do what you love.
It's not that I wouldn't want to go to grad school. I would do it after a few years of working but I don't have the transcript for it, there's no way in hell I could get into anywhere decent with my grades. I transferred and bounced around my first year and that fucked me up a lot.
I'll even help you out.
>listserv.umd.edu
I've found my MS, PhD, and postdoc opportunities on ECOLOG. Good luck.
Thanks