Today our program was represented by two great talks by @gmkov.bsky.social and @vonschmalensee.bsky.social on AI usage during our department day. Loke spoke on agentic AI and Gabriela spoke on APIs!

We have a new exiting PhD position in our program on the skin microbiome of amphibians, supervised by @cortazar-chinarro.bsky.social! Follow the link to read more and apply: www.uu.se/en/about-uu/.... Deadline the 8th of May.

We have a new exiting opportunity to join our program with a new PhD position supervised by @dbergerbiol.bsky.social co-supervised by @gmkov.bsky.social on the repeatability of evolution in seed beetles! Click the link to read more and apply! www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Bridging the gap: improving methodologies for future avian microbiome research Recent advances in the field of wild avian microbiome research have significantly deepened our understanding of the eco-evolutionary dynamics of bird–microbe interactions. Consequently, the field is ...

New review paper on bird #microbiome methods out!

Bridging the gap: improving methodologies for future avian microbiome research

🐦🦠🧬 #OA @avianbiology.bsky.social @charlisdavies.bsky.social @kbodawatta.bsky.social

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Huge congratulations to our newest Dr. Theodore Squires for defending his thesis on the ”Evolutionary ecogenomics of North Atlantic ptarmigan” at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. You can read his thesis here uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record...

This week we had a visit from Dr. Nathalie Feiner from the Max Planck institute in Plönn, where she spoke about her work on common wall lizards and the origin and developmental background of the ‘nigriventris syndrome’.

Check our Open Access paper on the Tokara Leaf Warbler – a previously undescribed, threatened Japanese bird: doi.org/10.1093/pnas... Thx to all coauthors: Takema Saitoh, @dariashipilina.bsky.social. Shin-Ichi Seki, Canwei Xia, Lijun Zhang & Urban Olsson. @animecol-uu.bsky.social #birds #biodiversity

I am pleased to announce this account is now run by me, @cenkvist.bsky.social. I am a PhD student working on microbiome and diet in wolverines 🦠. I am exited to share all about the amazing research happening at our program! Thank you to Yishu Zhu for her great work running the account before me! 😊

Functional genomics reveals key gene families and molecular pathways for extreme cold survival in the khapra beetle - BMC Biology Background The khapra beetle (Trogoderma granarium Everts) is among the world’s most destructive invasive pests, threatening food security and international trade. Its larvae exhibit exceptional resil...

Lingyu Zeng, Göran Arnqvist et al. show that the extreme cold tolerance of the khapra beetle has a quite complex genetic architecture, involving several genes involved in stress signalling but also those than mediate general metabolic processes 🧬

Check it out at link.springer.com/article/10.1...

and
Emerging Technologies in Bird Monitoring and Research: Artificial Intelligence, eDNA, Remote Sensing, and Other Approaches: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/...

The international ornithological journal Avian Research, which publishes Open Access for FREE, has calls for two special issues:
Avian Conservation in the Anthropocene: Challenges, Innovations, and Future Directions: lnkd.in/dcWNqPxu (deadline 31 December 2026)

and

Bar-tailed Lark Ammomanes cincture Photo: Zongzhuang Liu

Congratulations to my former student Zongzhuang Liu for publishing a paper on Weak nuclear divergence despite pronounced mitochondrial divergence within a widespread desert-inhabiting Palearctic lark (Aves: Alaudidae). See doi.org/10.1111/zsc.... (Open Access)

Congratulations to my former student Lei Wu who recently published "Parallel divergence with shared barriers and niche
separation between two sympatric avian species groups" (dx.doi.org/10.1111/jse....) (Open Access). Willow Tit Poecile montanus and Marsh Tit P. palustris species groups in China

Neele giving an overview of the background of the thesis

Huge congrats to Neele Schmidt for successfully defending her PhD thesis “Ecosystem restoration through restocking hatchling cod in the Baltic Sea” 🎉🐟

Neele addressed several ecological challenges in the endeaver of restocking cod hatchlings. Read the thesis at: uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record...

Last week the annual @animecol-uu.bsky.social symposium, 'Revolution', counted with several presentations from the students and researchers in our lab! Yishu Zhu, Ana Gomes, Sophia Stratton, Michaëla Berdougo, and Anna Qvarnström presented the most recent updates on the flycatchers work!

Great Revolution at @animecol-uu.bsky.social : thank you for inviting me, fun to be on the other side of the barricades this time 😀

Alex explaining an experiment where C. elegans received food treatments with or without added odor

Another inspiring plenary talk today by @alexeimaklakov.bsky.social — Why Live Longer on Less (and Why the Sexes Age Differently)? Dietary restriction leads to longer life span, but is it through trade-offs as commonly believed? 🧐

(Preprint at www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)

Today I had the chance to show some preliminary data from my wolverine #microbiome project at our program symposia Revolution @animecol-uu.bsky.social 🦠

Anna Runemark introducing the sparrow study system

Great plenary talk this morning by Prof. Anna Runemark @biologylu.bsky.social titled ‘Novel variation from hybridization: more than new combinations of alleles in coding genes’. Exciting exploration of hybrid transgression in sparrows at different levels 🤩

#Revolution2026

#Revolution2026 has officially started! 😃

Looking forward to two fun science-filled days. Invited speakers are Anna Runemark and Alexei Maklakov. @animecol-uu.bsky.social

Shout out to the organizers this year! @michaelaberdougo.bsky.social , Ana Gomes, @abhishek11.bsky.social , Hana Merchant, Veronika Mrazek, @christinapan.bsky.social

#Revolution2026

Programme head Anna Qvarnström starting the event. An event flyer is in the foreground.

Our annual programme symposium, 'Revolution', is here again! The two days ahead will be full of great science 🧬

We’ve been working on this paper longer than it took adaptive alleles to cross the species barrier (in both directions) and make two pests ever more resistant to the things we throw at them.

New preprint out 🧬🌱🐛

Gill-associated microbiome as indicators of population stress and condition in Eastern Baltic Cod The skin microbiome contributes to host health by facilitating pathogen exclusion, priming the immune system modulation and maintaining skin homeostasis. We examined how the composition of the skin mi...

Happy to announce that we have a new pre-print out. We analyzed the 16s microbiome profiling of two different Baltic cod poputions in the Eastern baltic sea 😀.

doi.org/10.64898/202...

Master Projects available in the Qvarnström lab @qvarnstromlab.bsky.social studying climate adaptation and speciation using a natural flycatcher hybrid zone on Öland, Sweden!

Check available projects here 👇👇
drive.google.com/file/d/1B69x...

SAD NEWS! we have found Ranavirus for the first time in scandinavian península affecting wild amphibian populations

doi.org/10.3354/dao0...

The Birgitta Sintring Foundation – Department of Ecology and Genetics – Uppsala University

Interested in applying for a postdoc on wildlife #microbiomes in my lab at Uppsala University, Sweden?

The local Birgitta Sintring Foundation gives out generous 2-year postdoc scholarships to early-career researchers who apply with a PI at the department. Deadline Feb 9.

www.uu.se/en/departmen...

The effects of sexual selection on functional and molecular reproductive divergence during experimental evolution in seed beetles Abstract. Sexual selection can be an engine of divergent evolution between closely related lineages, as a result of idiosyncratic coevolution of male and f

New paper alert! 📜

200 gen of strong sexual selection in beetles 🪲 causes divergent evolution of male and female traits, possibly through more divergent expression of reproductive proteins . Work by Arnqvist group. Check it out 👇

academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

#evolution

Two weeks left to apply for this position!

Feel free to email if there are any questions.

Happy to share the recent paper by Marta Garrigós et al.

Effects of avian #Plasmodium exposure on the #microbiota of #Culex pipiens. 🦟🦠

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Marta spent a month in our group at UU last year; great to see this published! @jmartinezpuente.bsky.social @cenkvist.bsky.social