When the deleterious mutation rate is higher than the back-mutation rate (in this case, 40x greater), then we see a totally different dynamic for dominant muts - for some selection coefficients, there is no single equilibrium point - there are three points! Two are stable points, one is unstable

First, we found that our results are quite sensitive to mutation rates. If the deleterious mutation rate = back mutation rate, then this is the plot of the equilibrium allele frequency and load of the populations. Nothing surprising here, except there is a 'bump' in the load for the dominant case

These PDEs are not easy to analytically understand, and are surprisingly much much more complex than the diploid ODEs (it's not just a factor of two difference!). This is just one of the entries of the Jacobian for a tetraploid with polysomic inheritance - don't stare at this for too long, I beg you

New Paper! In 2019, my first dissertation chapter revealed complicated polyploidies in the cotton family (Malvaceae) but we lacked the tools and genomes to truly understand it. Now with better genomes and improved methods, it's much more complicated than we thought. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks for everything, Tucson!

I arrived in St. Louis today, and am incredibly excited to see what this city has in store for me.

Only one month until the Conover Lab officially opens at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center!

I am ecstatic to share that I have accepted the Assistant Member and Principal Investigator position at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO!

The Conover Lab will open June 1, 2025, and will be broadly interested in polyploid evolutionary genomics.