New paper: Consequences of asexuality in natural populations: insights from stick insects Featured in Nature Research Highlights: Sex pays off for stick insects despite costs We empirically tested theoretical predictions of the genomic consequences of asexuality using 5 Timema sex-asex sister pairs that are ecologically similar: signatures of arrested GC-biased gene conversion in asexuals that […]
No sex, no problem! Biologists from Goettingen and Lausanne analyse how loss of sex affects the genetic makeup of oribatid mites Sexual reproduction is linked to various benefits for the survival of a species. Amongst others, sex counters the accumulation of accidentally occurring deleterious mutations by allowing for exchange of genetic material. According to the […]
I re-designed the homepage a bit and it is still ongoing.
A bit late, but here is a new paper from Ken on decay of genes involved in sexual traits I am co-author on. Available open access at GBE.
Kirsten, Tanja and me wrote a while ago a chapter on the “Evolution and Maintenance of Sex” for an encyclopedia of evolutionary biology. I am really happy how it turned out. You can find it here (and upon request): researchgate
Available open access at MBE! http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org//content/early/2015/11/11/molbev.msv261.abstract
The ESEB 2015 took place here in Lausanne this week. Quite convenient. For the outreach activity, I answered a ‘question of the day’: Is the male Y chromosome really fragile? And will future human societies exclusively consist of females? …very likely not. find out here in English and here in French
Upon completing my PhD in Goettingen, I recently moved to Switzerland to join the Schwander group. Exciting times. My new affiliation: Group Schwander – Evolution of reproductive and genetic systems Department of Ecology and Evolution University of Lausanne Le Biophore CH-1015 Lausanne Switzerland Office 3119 Phone: +41 (0)21 692 4162 Email: jbast [at] unil . […]
With some delay (due to the great chinese firewall): New paper out about the genomic landscape of early parallel speciation: Stick Insect Genomes Reveal Natural Selection’s Role in Parallel Speciation Got the cover picture and quite some media coverage (click details on altmetric batch to see).
I recently got a Dell XPS 12 Ultrabook and I am pretty excited about the power of this 1.5 kg machine. The intention is to use this ultrabook/tablet hybrid as ‘office’ and NGS data handling system on the go. The specs are fantastic… energy efficient Intel i7 Haswell with 4 cores, 8 GB memory and […]