If you don't have a spare computer, want to try out a Linux distribution, and are a little intimidated by the details of setting up a dual-boot, check out Wubi. It makes a dual-boot pretty much a "one-click" affair, loading up the Ubuntu distribution via a Windows installer.

Since everyone is talking about the fact that the Polar Bear how become a protected species, I thought I'd point to this cool study, Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeography of the North American Brown Bear and Implications for Conservation. Additionally, check out the figure below....

Since everyone is talking about the fact that the Polar Bear how become a protected species, I thought I'd point to this cool study, Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeography of the North American Brown Bear and Implications for Conservation. Additionally, check out the figure below....

I know I've posted on this topic before, but I thought I'd revisit it again. You do know that sometimes population bottlenecks can actually result in more variation being freed up for selection? This may strike you as a bit strange; after all, the power of selection to effect phenotypic change is proportional to genetic variance, specifically, additive genetic variance. Population bottlenecks imply a reduction in effective population size, the increase of sample variance across generations, that is, random genetic drift. As population size drops the stochastic change in gene frequencies becames proportionately much greater and alleles rapidly go extinct, or fix, within populations (average time until fixations in generations is proportional to 4N_e, where N_e is effective population size). The homogenizing effect of this dynamic is similar to what might occur with inbreeding, where effective population size is reduced through population substructure, and individuals within the demes quickly become closely related over a few generations. Obviously you know that inbreeding leads to a loss of variation. So how exactly can we extract more additive genetic variance from this? In short, but converting other types of variance....