There was once a time that researchers had to be convinced that molecular population genetics was useful, says Mike the Mad Biologist. Once the field became popular, the "early adopters" who were regularly using PCR and clone-based sequences were "hot intellectual commodities" — that is until the field became overcrowded, and nearly every department already had a molecular population geneticist. A few years before that, Mike says, there was a similar phenomenon in marine biology with clonal invertebrate biologists. So which niche is next?