I am a PhD student in the department of integrative biology, co-supervised by Karl Cottenie and Ryan Gregory. My research interests lie in adapting ecology methods for use on genomic data, explaining patterns of abundance and diversity in transposable elements, thinking about the genome in three dimensions, and the philosophy of biology. I am also interested in ways to make genome-scale data accessible.

I am also part of a working group the Philosophy and Biology working group. In addition to myself, a bioinformatician, this group includes two evolutionary biologists, a community ecologist, a computer scientist and a philosopher. Together we have addressed conceptual questions in biology such as what is genome ecology, can community ecology find generalizations, and what are the practical differences between ecological and molecular neutral theory. Our current project involves developing a simulation to model genome ecology processes.

I completed undergraduate work in molecular biology and genetics and my MSc in bioinformatics both from the University of Guelph.

• S Linquist, K Cottenie, TA Elliott, B Saylor, SC Kremer, TR Gregory (2015) Applying ecological models to communities of genetic elements: The case of neutral theory, Molecular ecology.24(13), 3232-3242

• S Linquist, B Saylor, K Cottenie, TA Elliott, SC Kremer, T Ryan Gregory (2013) Distinguishing ecological from evolutionary approaches to transposable elements, Biological Reviews.88(3),573-584

• B Saylor, TA Elliott, S Linquist, SC Kremer, TR Gregory, K Cottenie (2013) A novel application of ecological analyses to assess transposable element distributions in the genome of the domestic cow, Bos taurus. Genome.56 (9),521-533

• S Linquist, TR Gregory, TA Elliott, B Saylor, SC Kremer, K Cottenie.(2016) Yes! There are resilient generalizations (or “laws”) in ecology. The Quarterly review of biology. 91(2),119-131