A new analysis from the Molecular Fisheries Laboratory has been published. It compares simulated and empirical genetic data to refute the idea of a single, long-distance migration event for a commerically-important species in Queensland (Mugil cephalus) and demonstrates the feasibility of spatially-realistic ecological-genetic scenario testing.
For those interested in elasmobranch research, there is a new publication coming soon from CRC Press. If you are interested in population genetics, then go to this chapter for the latest information.
Ovenden J., Dudgeon C., Feutry P., Feldheim K., Maes G. E. (2019) Genetics and Genomics for Fundamental and Applied Research on Elasmobranchs. In: Shark Research. Emerging Technologies and Applications for the Field and Laboratory. (eds. Carrier JC, Heithaus MR, Simpfendorfer C), pp. 235-253. Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton.
Andy Moore (Molecular Fisheries Laboratory Associate) visited UQ today for talks with Jenny. Andy is based at the Bureau of Agricultural and Resources Economics and Sciences in Canberra. He works on a range of topics including quantitative stock assessments, fisheries status reporting, genetics, and recreational fishing surveys. Andy is currently primary investigator on a national social and economic recreational fishing survey and a national survey of the catch of southern Bluefin tuna in Australia, as well as a scientific member on Recfishing Research, the Victorian RAC, the Great Australian Bight Resource Assessment Group.
Left: Andy's seminar on designing research surveys for estimating blue fin tuna recreational catch was well attended at the EcoSciences Precinct. Thanks to Jess Morgan.
The visit by Professor Dan Heath from University of Windsor (Canada) came to an end on 24th April 2018. As well as enjoying the fabulous University of Queensland campus and mild weather, Dan collaborated with Jenny and MFL members on eDNA and transcriptome projects. We look forward to further visits!
All welcome to Dan's seminar this Friday at University of Queensland. Poster gives the details.
Juliana arrived today for a six month internship with MFL at UQ. Juliana is an oceanographer and Ph.D. student in the Fishery Genetics and Conservation research group of led by Dr. Fernando Mendonça at Universidade Federal Paulista (Brazil). Juliana's work focusses on the global phylogeography of the Blue shark (Prionace glauca) based on molecular evidence (SNPs and the mitochondrial DNA control region).
Left to right: Juliana B. De Biasi, Amelia Armstrong, Dani Davenport and Christine Dudgeon.
Nice way to start the day! ResearchGate.net reports that our paper citing the popular downloadable software NeEstimator has been cited 300 times.
Watch out of a new version of NeEstimator soon, which will be enabled for SNP data analyses and other improvements such as the implementation of a new method for estimating confidence intervals.
Jones A. T., Ovenden J. R., Wang Y.-G. (2016) Improved confidence intervals for the linkage disequilibrium method for estimating effective population size. Heredity 117, 217-223.
Christine Dudgeon (right), Jenny Ovenden (centre) are pleased to host a visit by Dr Gregory Maes (KU Leuven - JCU). Greg gave an interesting seminar yesterday "Application of genomic tools to inform conservation and management of the Galapagos shark (Carcharhinus galapagensis)", which stimulated lots of discussion about genomics and genetics of elasmobranch species from Australia and worldwide.
Greg Maes did his postgraduate training at the University of Leuven (Belgium) on population and conservation genetics of aquatic organisms, focusing on exploited and endangered species such as eels, flatfishes, pikes, hybridogenetic frogs and polyploid invasive carps. He spent 6 years doing various postdocs in Belgium, Finland and Canada, examining the applications of population⁄conservation genomics approaches to exploited freshwater and marine fishes at various spatio-temporal scales. His main interest lies in multidisciplinary connectivity assessments, molecular traceability and the genomic basis of fisheries induced evolution in exploited species. He is currently an Adjunct senior lecturer in Evolutionary and Applied Genomics at James Cook University.
