Leache Lab

Herp Collection

Students prepare a 15 foot python at the Burke Museum.

Washington Reptiles

Pygmy short-horned lizard from Central Washington. Photo: Jared Grummer

Research

Old school preparation of a genomic library for next-generation sequencing. Nowadays we use a pippin prep. Photo by Duncan Reid.

Washington Amphibians

Western red-backed salamander from West Seattle. Photo: Matt McElroy

Fieldwork

A look inside our work tent on a recent collecting trip to West Africa. Photo: Duncan Reid.

SEQloporus

SEQloporus: we're using next-generation sequence data to build a phylogenomic tree for Sceloporus

Lab Members

Graduate Student Matt McElroy petting a wolverine at the Burke Museum.

Publications

The accuracy of species tree estimation under simulation: a comparison of methods. Systematic Biology.

2013 Summer Fashion Trends: Taxonomy Edition

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Adam

Picking the perfect t-shirt to showcase your taxonomic proclivities is an extremely important decision. With so many different options out there, choosing the one to best-fit your personal biases can be an intimidating and difficult decision. Some aspects to consider are fabric quality, t-shirt fit, sizing and colors. I scored this epic t-shirt at the annual herpetology meetings in Albuquerque. The shirt is a must-have for anyone that has blind hatred for any and all taxonomic changes in squamate phylogeny.

Back.

Front.

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How to resume MCMC analysis in BEAST/SNAPP

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Adam

Phylogenetic analyses can take a long time to finish. Instead of starting over from scratch after crashing your computer try to resume your MCMC analysis where you left off. Here’s how it works in BEAST2.0/SNAPP:

>BEAST2.0 -threads 4 -resume -seed 1373461217289 -statefile /Users/leache/SNAPP/phryno.xml.state phryno.xml

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New Burke Herpetology Webpage

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Adam

The Burke Herpetology website is new and improved thanks to the help of Cathy Britt (Digital Communications Specialist at the Burke). One of the many cool new additions is an Amphibian Q&A section, which includes answers to important questions like “what happens if you kiss a frog?” Thanks to Heidi Rockney for writing all of the Q&A’s.

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xkcd posts horned lizard art

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Adam

Physics comedy blog xkcd has posted a simple and elegant figure depicting a horned lizard squirting blood (in color). Excerpt from the post: ”Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to five feet. I don’t know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shoot jets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at it until I need to lie down.”