Earlier this month, I took two of my students (Krystal and Matt) to the 12th Annual Arthropod Genomics Symposium at the University of Kansas. AGS is a smaller conference (~150 attendees) but attracts a healthy mixture of new and established researchers in arthropod genomics. I’ve found everyone to be incredibly nice, open, and supportive – echoing a statement by Rob Waterhouse, it feels like a gathering of old friends. This year was no exception, and I am incredibly grateful for the warm and welcoming reception that my students received.

For the last few months, Krystal has been evaluating different methods for detecting inversions from SNPs. Using data from Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles mosquitoes, Krystal compared signatures in estimates of linkage disequilibrium (LD), minor allele frequencies (MAFs), and PCA association tests from the lab’s prior work. Krystal presented her results in a poster titled “Detecting and Localizing Inversions from SNPs.”

I am looking forward to taking more students to AGS in 2021! (AGS will not be held next year as many of the usual attendees will at the International Congress on Entomology.