Population and conservation genomics of forest trees: seeing the forest for the trees

Population and conservation genomics of forest trees: seeing the forest for the trees

Background Forest trees exhibit striking adaptations to the environments in which they grow. A long history of quantitative genetic experimentation has established the genetic basis for many traits, which are likely adaptive since many of them are also correlated with environmental heterogeneity. The genes underlying these traits, however, have largely remained elusive. Recent applications of h...

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Although tens, or even hundreds, of molecular or pharmacological interventions have been shown to affect the course of heart failure in animal models, few have translated to clinical therapies. This likely stems from the fact that biological robustness and flexibility are conferred by the evolution of redundant or adaptive signaling and gene expression pathways, which lead to not one, but multi...

Neuroimaging: Seeing the Trees for the Forest

New functional imaging studies demonstrate that it is possible to decode a sensory visual pattern, and even an internal perceptual state, by combining seemingly insignificant feature selective signal biases present in a large number of voxels.

Seeing the forest and the trees.

Seeing the forest and the trees

Moffett (2012) misrepresents the position of Gordon, Heller, and others on supercolonies. We recognize the existence of Argentine ant supercolonies, populations of colonies all descended from common ancestors. A substantial body of work shows the common origins of certain Argentine ant populations of colonies, or supercolonies (e.g., Vogel et al. 2010). We consider that a colony, unlike a super...