In India with kid and no apt

We made it! We're here! 2 months since my last post. A few words of advice -- cancel your Sprint account before you leave. Also -- if you marry someone from India, get a PIO card (Person of Indian Origin). And if you have any children with aforementioned Indian citizen, get them an OCI card (Overseas Citizenship of India, I think). That will save you lots of trouble.

When you get to India, specifically Bangalore, do have a guide or someone who can take you around, unless you a) speak whatever language they speak wherever you're at, or b) have a close relative who has lots of time and is willing to take you under their wing. If you are travelling there with a very young child, well, I hope your relatives take good care of you, have lots of time to play with the kid, lots of toys, a playground nearby, etc. Did I mention toys and a playground? Have you tried to entertain a single 2-yr old child in a toyless flat lately, and no play area outside? I don't recommend it... If your very young child has allergies or special needs, I hope your relatives love the child enough to find ways of making things work for them. If you are planning on moving to a developing country with a very young child and don't know anyone there and are not naturally adventurous and garrulous and enterprising, uhhhh, well, how do I say it... don't?

We're extremely lucky to have my mother-in-law living here, since the temporary apartment set up by my husband's work is not really tenable for a 2-yr old. Especially since his boss realized that the office doesn't work well and they'll have to use the temporary apartment for an office for awhile. So yes, thank goodness my mother-in-law owns a flat. Though it's small, it has 3 rooms, and we've taken over two of them. What would we do if she weren't here? It would be fine if it were just us, but with a 2-yr old (and an active one at that, with allergies), it's tough. I should really play tourist sometime soon and take bunches of pictures and post them! Though we're in a giant city, we have cows, goats, and bulls pulling carts. Few cats, lots of dogs.

I'll try to write something more detailed sometime. Right now, TM's taking a nap, so I thought I'd jot down some thoughts. Basically, we're looking for a flat to rent, and once we're set up I'll be able to perhaps compile a summary of the emails I've been sending to family about the transitions. Setting things up here is nothing, I mean, nothing at all like setting things up in the US. Nope. But I'll learn...

Cheers
rhamnites

FSTAT analyses make a pretty picture

I should probably have a blog for different parts of my life – kids, healthcare etc, and PhD work. But I’ll just stick with this one.

My advisor sent me a paper (Waples & Gaggiotti 2006) that talked about the definitions of a population, and included some cool tests to see whether a group of samples were panmictic or not. How did I miss it? I’d read it before, but didn’t put the analysis together with what I wanted to do. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! Structure couldn’t do it, and Geneclass2 wasn’t quite it either.

The Structure analyses were a mess – Brachypodium sylvaticum has high inbreeding (really high, like FIS=0.7), and the source populations for the small area we’re working on right now are really admixed. Or so it seems. Whatever the problem, Structure identified the peripheral populations as belonging to distinct clusters, while the source populations were a big huge mess. GeneClass2 was fun, but the picture it painted wasn’t clear – I could easily tell which populations were sources for a lot of other pops, but it was hard to figure out a way to draw it out graphically.

Then I re-read Waples & Gaggiotti 2006 and found that they did a pairwise test (in FSTAT) for population differentiation, and when the tests were insignificant, they concluded that the populations were, well, effectively a single population. That’s just what I was looking for! We had sampled about every mile along three roads, and I wanted to see which populations (sample sites, really) were similar, thinking that would give a good idea of dispersal patterns in the area. I probably should have mapped out all the individuals, and it wouldn’t have been too hard, but I didn’t, so now estimating neighborhood size is out of the question. That would have been ideal. But this pairwise test for differentiation works pretty well! I’m happy with it, at any rate.

I drew up a picture on a map with sample sites connected that were not different, and sent it off to my advisor and other coauthor (the former undergraduate). I haven’t heard from them yet, but I’m hoping they’ll like it.

Meanwhile, the move to India is moving apace. My husband will come back to “collect” us on Apr 10th or so, then we’ll spend a few days in MD with TM so she can have a break from flying. Then we’ll fly to Frankfurt and from there to Bangalore. The last leg will be the worst, ‘cause she’ll be awake. Yoikes. Well, we’ll do our best.

In India, we’ll stay in a temporary apartment provided by my husband’s job until I can find an apartment we like, then we’ll move. Hooray! I really look forward to having a place of our own. Thank goodness his work is paying for the move, ‘cause it’s costing an arm and a leg. Anyway, then TM will have her toys and books again, and we’ll have more than one room to live in! What fun! I hope to find a school for her quickly, so she can get back to playing with friends and I can get back to work. I figure that after about a year of living there, we’ll be enjoying ourselves immensely.

My grandpa’s visiting this week, and I’m in charge of entertainment today and Friday, so there’s work down the drain, but it may be the last time I see him, so I’d better aprovechar, as they say in Spain.