9
votes
Accepted
How close genetically is the most human-like chimpanzee to the most chimp-like human?
You may be interested in this 2005 Nature paper from the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium: Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome. It breaks down ...
- 445
6
votes
How close genetically is the most human-like chimpanzee to the most chimp-like human?
The answer given by leekaiinthesky and partially in the comments on the question give a good general picture. I also think that the variation within the respective species is way less than between the ...
- 2,868
6
votes
Accepted
What is the weight percentage of all people as compared to all Natural life?
This has been studied in this paper, and they came up with:
Total biomass = 550 gigatons of carbon
Human biomass = 0.06 gigatons of carbon
So this would make humans about 0.01% of all biomass. If ...
- 296
5
votes
What is the best way to calculate the biological diversity of samples from bacterial/viral OTU tables?
I mostly concur with @Nathan's answer, and in particular with the references he provided.
As Shannon & Simpson indices can ...
- 51
5
votes
How do I explain "effective number of types" to a lay audience?
For a lay audience, I don't think you need to explain too much of the math, just the general concept, and an example will work best.
Let's think about trees. You have 5 types of trees in a forest. If ...
- 46.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Are there any photosynthetic catalysts in use other than chlorophyll?
There are photosynthetic organisms that use retinal-rhodopsin complex. However, the mechanism of photosynthesis is different in these organisms than those that employ chlorophyll dependent ...
- 35.6k
4
votes
Can I compare Shannon-Wiener diversity indices between plots of different sizes (area)?
Theoretically the index for two habitats of different areas are not directly comparable. Consider the species area relationship. You see more species when you look over a larger area. So you will ...
- 435
4
votes
Accepted
Forest Fires and Horsetails
I didn't believe this was a real thing, and I'm still very skeptical, but it is something that's claimed to happen!
Their stems & leaves have a siliceous epidermis, so if rubbing b/n 2 ...
- 14.3k
4
votes
Beta-diversity for data with zeros
I would recommend using a Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrix since it accounts for abundances and can handle the so called double zero problem. I'm on my commute now and so must return to this for a ...
- 30.3k
4
votes
Accepted
What does genetic diversity in one species have to do with survival rate when an epidemic spreads?
Genetic diversity could be understood as a variation in alleles (gene variants) and their frequencies in a population. Due to these allelic variations, we would expect an inherent variability in ...
- 30.3k
3
votes
What are the negative consequences of a narrowed biodiversity to the planet?
From an ecological sense, cycles of living beings are intertwined. Breaking cycles affects life being able to live, reproduce, and die in a manageable way. Insects, animals, and plants help feed each ...
- 5,590
3
votes
How many different species have existed on Earth?
From Raup (1986).
Up to 4 billion species of plants and animals are estimated to have
lived at some tlme m the geologic past (2), most of these in the last
600 million years (Phanerozoic time). ...
- 35.6k
3
votes
Accepted
Which plant's part is this?
This is a bit hard to say exactly, since there is a number of possibilities. We can be pretty sure that these sample is from a Cypress, belonging to the family of Cupressaceae, but which subfamily or ...
- 52.5k
3
votes
Accepted
Measure of diversity, accounting for known species
Simpson's estimator, which assumes that sample frequencies are not population frequencies, is unbiased on the probability scale. As @fileunderwater noted, it can be helpful to quantify diversity in ...
- 233
3
votes
Why is there an apparent reduction of reptile species near the Mississippi River?
The reptiles mostly were ploughed away and replaced with soy beans.
The low reptile diversity zone matches the Mississippi Alluvial Plain which includes the Mississippi Floodplain. The Mississipi ...
- 10.5k
3
votes
Database of Geographic Range of Species
The GBIF database that was suggested can give you locations of occurrences given a specific animal. But you asked for lists of animals given some location. An excellent tool to give a list of animals ...
- 435
3
votes
Does leaving land alone actually help nature conservation?
I'll give you an example, because this question is pretty case specific. In Delhi, my hometown, they kept areas of the forest, the 'Sanjay Van' free from construction and people and only very recently ...
- 732
2
votes
How close genetically is the most human-like chimpanzee to the most chimp-like human?
I found at least one example of genes where the same genes and the same alleles exist in both humans and other primates but the frequencies of the different alleles are different in different primate ...
- 590
2
votes
What is the best way to calculate the biological diversity of samples from bacterial/viral OTU tables?
The vegan package is suitable for your needs, but you may find you need to use others or code your own functions.
Due to sequencing biases, you shouldn't trust ...
- 176
2
votes
Bird diversity and the avian flu
Biodiversity is the opposite of monoculture, and we know that one possible consequence of monoculture is disease transmission -- bananas being the modern poster child for monoculture leading to ...
- 14.3k
2
votes
Accepted
What is the minimum sample size to get reliable results in haplotype and nucleotide estimations?
I'm still a little unclear on what the analysis looks like, but I'm going to assume for the sake of this answer that it's a single locus sequenced across multiple populations, with some number of ...
- 10.5k
2
votes
Using proportion or a diversity index when dealing with just two strains
Extended upon the suggested statistic
The proportion $p$ is definitely not a good measure of diversity. A proportion of 0 or 1 both indicates no species diversity as only one species exist. If one ...
- 68.3k
2
votes
Accepted
Shannon diversity index: Pi relates to all found species, or number of species by site?
I am trying to dig into Shannon's species diversity index to compare the species diversity between different sites
Shannon's diversity index is a measure of alpha diversity, or diversity within a ...
- 4,787
2
votes
Can a species include only one subspecies?
Think about it like this:
How can a you subdivide 1 individual and still get a whole?
The answer is, you can't.
For there to be subspecies you need to have defining characteristics that can be used ...
- 12.9k
1
vote
Can a species include only one subspecies?
In biological classification, the term subspecies refers to one of two or more populations of a species living in different subdivisions of the species' range and varying from one another by ...
- 3,862
1
vote
Accepted
Assessing beta diversity variations with time
I think the Mantel test is a valid way to test for a correlation, but Spearman is a non-parametric measure of correlation, and will not necessarily test for or estimate a linear trend. A Pearson ...
- 4,787
1
vote
What's the best way to measure biodiversity?
A very good way to measure biodiversity would be to do environmental barcoding with high-throughput sequencing methods, and then use an algorithm that estimates genetic distance to get both species ...
- 7,703
1
vote
Time taken for species to become endemic
From wikipedia > endemism:
Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type.
...
- 68.3k
1
vote
Is there a biological explanation for a 0.5 difference in allele size with PCR product?
In my experience, working with a similar approach in Campylobacter jejuni, the base pair measurements from these techniques are imprecise and need to be carefully calibrated. I am unsurprised to see 0....
- 6,957
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