February 18th & 25th:

SNACKS and Who is Who by Mara and Nick 

BEHAVIOR TOPIC # 2:

Behavior paper:

Bruyn1, P. J. N. , Tosh, C.A. and Terauds, A.(2013) Killer whale ecotypes: is there a global model? Biol. Rev. 88:62–80

Genomics paper:

Moura AE, Kenny JG, Chaudhuri R, Hughes MA, Welch AJ, Resinger RR, Bruyn PJN, Dahlheim ME, Hall N and Hoelzel AR (2014) Population genomics of the killer whale indicates ecotype evolution in sympatry involving both selection and driftMolecular Ecology 23:5179–5192.

Questions for reading (students must turn in sets 4 throughout semester):

  1. As always, make a list of any new terms and do some background research.

  2. What are SNPs and how are they used in this study?

  3. What does FST  measure? Why is it useful for this study?

  4. One goal in this study is the comparison of differentiation at neutral and selected loci. What overall patterns were evident between these two methods of measuring genetic differentiation? How do you interpret these differences?

  5. This paper attempted to determine function of selected genes based on GO enrichment. How did they map their genomic areas of interest to functionally annotated genes and why?

  6. What terms were found to be overrepresented in the GO analysis? How might these be behaviorally significant to these different populations/ecotypes?

  7. Philosophical Aside: What are the pitfalls of attempting to do behavioral genomics on free-ranging populations? How does it differ from the kinds of analysis you would potentially do in a laboratory setting?