population genetics
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New Research Casts Doubt on What Killed the Last Living Mammoth
The last mammoths to walk the Earth did not succumb to inbreeding after hundreds of generations, despite being stuck on a remote island off the coast of Siberia. That’s the finding of research published today in Cell which interrogated 21 woolly mammoth genomes to understand how the population’s genetic diversity may have played a role…
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India’s ‘Black Tigers’ Have Unusually Thick Stripes Thanks to a Genetic Mutation
At a wildlife park in eastern India, tigers feature a variety of coat fashions. Most notably, some of the cats have very thick black stripes. Now, a team of geneticists in India and the United States have identified a genetic mutation in the tiger troupe that explains why some of them are so dark.
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This ‘Map of Life’ Shows Where Undiscovered Species May Be Lurking
Nine years ago, a team of Yale ecologists mapped out the world’s life, a project that showed biodiversity patterns in geographical context; basically, a heat map of animal life. Now, they’ve gone a step further: documenting the likeliest spots for unknown species to still exist, in the hopes that those animals can be documented before…
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Your DNA Can Teach Us About Ancient History
For thousands of years, history has been recorded piecemeal, in books, artifacts, buildings and legends. But in the age of molecular biology, a new archive is helping to fill in the gaps: your genetic code.