Evolutionary landscapes of zygotic genome activation across animals www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Applications for our international Master‘s programme in Evolutionary Biology open again soon!
We offer teaching and exciting research in molecular and experimental evolution, behaviour, ecology to genomics, bioinformatics and modelling.
Come join us at JGU Mainz!

A phylogenetic tree of insects is shown annotating the presence or absence of a an antimicrobial peptide gene across winged insects

Various phylogenetic secondary loss events are mapped to a tree of insects to explain the parsimony calculations necessary to explain the diversity of insect Drosomycin antimicrobial peptide genes

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are key defence molecules of the innate immune system of plants and animals. Understanding the evolutionary origins of AMPs can help to explain how immune systems acquire novelty and vary in their defensive capabilities. However, AMPs evolve rapidly, and so the origins of similar AMPs across organisms is often unclear. Furthermore, false negatives due to low search sensitivity are common and can hinder confident annotations about true absences. Due to these difficulties, understanding whether similar AMP genes found in diverse organisms represent ancestral molecules or evolutionary novelties has been challenging. In this report, we present evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of the antifungal peptide gene Drosomycin across insects. We show that in Diptera, the presence of Drosomycin is restricted to the Melanogaster group and additionally the distant relative Drosophila busckii. We go on to recover Drosomycin genes in cockroaches (Blattodea), mantises (Mantodea), one katydid (Orthoptera), various beetles (Coleoptera), and a recently acquired pseudogenized Drosomycin locus in Liposcelis booklice (Psocodea), but no other insects. Explaining this diversity through shared ancestry requires at least 50 independent loss events, or just seven HGT events. Previous studies have suggested that similar AMPs found across divergent species reflect conservation from a common ancestor, or due to their small size, that they arose via convergent evolution resulting from pathogen-imposed selection. Our findings suggest horizontal gene transfer can be responsible for the presence of some AMP genes found scattered across the tree of life. By presenting a mechanism through which immune systems can acquire novelty, our study also suggests a possible explanation for certain lineage-specific competencies for defence against infectious disease. While loss of AMP genes is common in certain lineages, here we suggest gain of AMPs can occur just as suddenly.

Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23

@cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun).

Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects
bit.ly/DrsHGT

1/🧵

ExE 2026

Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!

Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11.
www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

JOB ALERT! Lecturer in Biological Sciences Come and join us in the world class Life Sciences Building at the University of Bristol! Closing date: Sunday 8 March

JOB ALERT! Lecturer in Biological Sciences Interested in our research areas? Click the link in our bio to discover more! Closing date: Sunday 8 March

JOB ALERT!

We are excited to announce that we are recruiting three new academics at lecturer level!

Click the link below for more info on how to apply, and don’t forget to explore our research themes too!

We look forward to receiving your applications!

www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Uppsala in late autumn

Join us at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Biology. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

"The relentless pursuit of academic success through publications in prestigious journals nearly broke me. Looking back, I’m not sure it was worth the sacrifice. " From, Zvonimir Marelja, PhD in Science Magazine (a prestigious journal) […]

Nice job (Prof in Animal Ecology) in a nice (unesco) city, in a great department: www.uni-regensburg.de/fileadmin/us...

This is really cool: a 'molecular recorder' built not of CRISPR but protein. In @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out this new preprint from the lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Lan Lou, @juliendevilliers.bsky.social, @karthikeyanc.bsky.social, @lahonderelab.bsky.social, the Tu Lab, and @joshuabenoit.bsky.social show that mosquito olfactory rhythms are synced with daily rhythms in how we smell.

Assembly of the infant gut microbiome and resistome are linked to bacterial strains in mother’s milk - Nature Communications Here, with metagenomic analyses on longitudinal samples collected from 195 mother-infant pairs, the authors show that the breast milk microbiome contributes to infant gut assembly through bacterial st...

Breast milk isn't just nutrition – it delivers live bacterial strains that colonize the infant gut and persist for months.

Happy to share our new paper, where we used metagenomics to track bacterial strains between 195 mother-infant pairs over the first 6 months of life:

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

A comprehensive review/expert statement on environmental risk factors of cardiovascular disease Abstract. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality globally, with over 20 million deaths each year. While traditional risk factors—su

the consequences of #climatechange for #cardiovascularhealth : a perfect #expert #review of all #environmental #stressors. how the impact cardiovascular health

Please retweet this link :
academic.oup.com/cardiovascre...

Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Biodiversity The Department of Biology was established in 2010 through the merger of the Departments of Ecology, Cell and Organism Biology, Biological Undergraduate Education, and the Biological Museums. The depar

Come and join me and my colleagues at the Department of Biology, #LundUniversity in #sweden! We have am open position as Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Biodiversity.

Apply here no later than February 11 2026:

lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:848749...

🚨 Tenure-track professorship at Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany, with a focus on evolutionary ecology of social hymenoptera 🐝🐜

Initially for 6 years:
www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/pr...

The commitments in the SAFE Labs Handbook.

A new community-driven lab handbook for reducing conflict and creating more positive and equitable work environments gets strong support from a survey of 200 researchers.
buff.ly/K7CGFLV

Dr Patrick Kennedy, winner of the ASAB Christopher Barnard Award.

🌟Huge CONGRATULATIONS to @patrick-kennedy.bsky.social who has won the @asab.org Christopher Barnard Award for Outstanding Contributions by a New Investigator. 🤗

Research on social evolution and what links climate & cooperation in a changing world, using #wasps as models.

#worthywinner #ECR #proud

ASAB spring conference 2026 logo with gorilla

If you’re sad #ASABWinter2025 is over, have no fear! #ASABSpring2025 🌼 is coming soon, from March 23-25 at Bristol University. It’s an especially fantastic meeting for students and ECRs 🤠

Don’t forget travel grants are due Feb 1!

www.asab.org/conferences-...

Excited to be part of the amazing team behind our upcoming symposium on Sex Evolution at #SMBE2026!

🔹 Daniel Jeffries
🔹 Paul Jay
🔹 @sphaeromeria.bsky.social
🔹 @astridboehne.bsky.social
🔹 @cbenvenuto.bsky.social

Join us in Copenhagen for cutting-edge discussions on #sex #evolution

Proud supervisor time! Well done @iswaryamohan.bsky.social for a lovely poster about her PhD on mosquito oviposition behaviour at #ASABWinter2025

Congratulations @kokkonut.bsky.social!

Ines in front of a slide reading „Animal Camouflage: evolutionary biology meets neuroscience, art and war“ with a chameleon

Ines in a camo Kilt in front of the podium

Starting with a public lecture by Innes Cuthill on camouflage… not only did he come dressed in camo, but a camo kilt 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ! #ASABWinter2025

Sad to be missing the #ASABWinter2025
@asab-meetings.bsky.social conference this week, but two postdocs that may interest ASAB members:

Edinburgh at dawn and dusk today. Beautiful city to be in at this time of year - and lots of wonderful sensory information & behaviour talks/posters today at #ASABWinter2025 @asab.org @asab-meetings.bsky.social

A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities

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

🧬✨ It’s official!
EMPSEB31 is coming to Germany, June 2026! Link in Bio 😉
Europe’s friendliest evolution meeting returns, by PhD students, for PhD students.
📍Oberwiesenthal, Germany
📅8–12 June 2026
🚨Save the date & follow us for updates!
#EMPSEB31 #EvoBio #PhDLife #ScienceCommunity #EMPSEB

Two evergreen bagworms feeding

One abbot's bagworm hanging out

Pre-print and weird repro thread time!

I've posted here about scale insects a lot, but ~half of my research is on Lepidoptera. My lab is developing bagworm moths (Psychidae) as models for comparative genomics.

You probably know them like you see in the pics below: caterpillars that make cases.

Shades of blue and red in a slice through an immuno stained brain showing some deliciously lovely looking mushroom body lobes - ripe for investigation during a funded PhD - and the central complex. Image credit: Dr Max Farnworth

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨

Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social

- employment benefits
- 4 years funding
- 1000% fun

Deadline: 14/1/2026

Details:
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

This looks very interesting and combines some of my 'evo-passions' too - disease vectors and ageing!

3 year postdoc funded by @ukri.org NERC on between-group cooperation in the Shark Bay dolphins is now live - please share widely 🙏 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...