Genome Sequencing Is For Ecologists, Too

Genome Sequencing Is For Ecologists, Too: "Daphnia's short generation time and small genome (a mere 200 million base pairs) makes it an ideal organism for laboratory and field studies of how environments influence -- and how they're influenced by -- an organism's genetics. The animals are common in lakes and ponds and have been used to monitor the health of aquatic environments. Members of the species can reproduce both with and without sex, which has important implications in evolutionary biology and ecology."