Petra Deane-Coe on Swamp Sparrow adaptation: PhD student Petra Deane-Coe gave a clear and animated talk on her innovative explorations of adaptive divergence in swamp sparrows that reside in different marsh habitats. Part of Petra’s presentation involved an in-depth comparison of differentiation as measured through complementary metrics for comparing genome-wide patterns of variation. There are some aspects of her study system that make it particularly well suited for these particular comparisons, but they are unusual and perhaps novel, so there was much discussion afterwards about how to interpret them, with a lot of interest among people who study populations at early stages of divergence. All of this was fueled by how well Petra laid out these scenarios in her talk; this is complicated, technical stuff that requires several logical connections, all of which Petra made perfectly clear as she guided the audience through her approach and results.
