Category Archives: Demography

A Tale of Two Maps: Ancient DNA and Ancient Hominins

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Adam Van Arsdale

A while back Chris Stringer linked to a wonderful interactive map on twitter. Still being updated, a great resource by ⁦@nickyrozenblatt⁩ mapping published ancient genomes + sources https://t.co/WFCZRNOw8O — Chris Stringer (@ChrisStringer65) December 12, 2018 The map, put together by … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Demography, Evolution, Fossils, Genetics | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Interesting pedigrees

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

I am in the midst of examining and grading an assortment of personal pedigree assignments for my personal genomics course. It is always interesting to see the complexity of reality, particularly reality in a place that has considerable diversity in … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Interesting pedigrees

Climate change, Hurricane Sandy and contemporary human infrastructure

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Late last winter I wrote a brief post about what I called the Age of Global Weirdness in relation to climate change. If there is any good that comes from the recent megastorm Sandy that has wrought havoc on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography, Evolution | Tagged , | Comments Off on Climate change, Hurricane Sandy and contemporary human infrastructure

Lifespan and condition-dependent mortality

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Following up on my post from yesterday on the evolutionary history of human longevity, there is a timely article out today in Current Biology on lifespan and condition-dependent mortality. The paper, by Hwei-Yen Chen and Alexei Maklakov, uses an experimental … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Lifespan and condition-dependent mortality

Human longevity in prehistory

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

A new article in PNAS, authored by Oskar Burger, Annette Baudisch and James Vaupel, is gathering some attention to the issue of the evolutionary history of human demography and longevity. The article itself covers a lot of old ground (excuse … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography, Ethnography, Evolution | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Human longevity in prehistory

Population replacements and founder effects in humans

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

TREE has an article in press looking at the impact of founder events on subsequent patterns of genetic diversity. The main argument of the paper, co-authored by Waters, Fraser & Hewitt (Founder takes all: density-dependent processes structure biodiversity), is that … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography, Evolution, Genetics | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Population level extinction in human prehistory readings, part 1

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of my current research projects is investigating the potential impact of population level extinction in human evolutionary history. I am focusing my efforts on Late Pleistocene Europe because it is a time and a place that we have a … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography, Evolution, Fossils, Genetics | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Population level extinction in human prehistory readings, part 1

Non-white births in the U.S. and historical U.S. census data

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

The N.Y. Times has a front-page article on a long-expected announcement from the U.S. Census Bureau that non-Hispanic white births are no longer a majority in the United States. This is the kind of threshold data point that will certainly … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Demography | Tagged , | Comments Off on Non-white births in the U.S. and historical U.S. census data

Neandertal demographic collapse

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Love Dalén, Anders Götherström and colleagues have an interesting short article available in advance view in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The article argues, on the basis of Neandertal mtDNA data, for a distinction between Western and Eastern Neandertals, with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography, Fossils | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Neandertal demographic collapse

Better to be on the leading edge

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Adam Van Arsdale

Speaking of demography, this is an interesting study by Claudia Moreau and colleagues at the Université de Montréal and the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Science Daily has a nice summary of the paper, as well. The researchers were able … Continue reading →

Posted in Demography | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Better to be on the leading edge