www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Diel transcriptional dynamics of a marine sponge and its microbiome in a natural environment - Animal Microbiome Animal Microbiome - Marine sponges are ecologically critical animals that host diverse microbial communities, forming complex symbiotic systems crucial to nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning...

Thankful to be part of this study looking at how the marine sponge and its microbes change gene activity across day and night in the natural ocean environment:

Diel transcriptional dynamics of a marine sponge and its microbiome in a natural environment
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

GBE | Ancestral Chromosome-Level Assemblies Reveal Posthybridization Genome Evolution in the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus)

Ho et al. present genome assemblies for the parental species of the unisexual hybrid New Mexico Whiptail Lizard, using it to analyze WGS data from the hybrids, suggesting that genomes of unisexual lineages diverge more quickly than anticipated.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf228

#genome #evolution

Genome-wide associations of fitness components reveal antagonistic pleiotropy and sexual conflict in the Florida Scrub-Jay www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09....

Elegant empirical validation of a theoretical expectation that changing your mutation bias allows you to access more beneficial mutations. From @deepaagashe.bsky.social & colleagues in @plosbiology.org

A new paper investigates how urbanization influences genetic connectivity in Dekay’s brown snakes across New Jersey, USA.
Photo: Benny Mazur/Wikimedia

Ya está abierta la pre-incripción al Taller de Genómica Evolutiva 2025. Organizado por @selvaorgco.bsky.social y La Universidad de los Andes, con el apoyo de @sse-evolution.bsky.social. Hay becas disponibles! ciencias.uniandes.edu.co/56-eventos/7...

Fresh from the California Conservation Genomics Project: the first North American skink reference genome! The high-quality assembly of Gilbert’s skink (Plestiodon gilberti) will advance studies on hybridization, speciation, and adaptation.

New research exploring microgeographic differentiation in the bearded anole, Anolis pogus, reveals minimal inbreeding and contrasting demographic trends with co-occurring species.

Very pleased to see this officially out - Genome Architecture and Speciation in Plants and Animals. With @siluwang.bsky.social, @dortizba.bsky.social and Loren Rieseberg. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Mutation accumulation underpins evolution of lifespan extension by dietary restriction www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06....

Some evidence in the literature suggests that speciation with gene flow could occur (some examples in plants). Shafaat (Ricardo Azevedo) showed today that gene flow can cause more speciation for a given genetic differentiation. Cool stuff!

Dylan Padilla @dylanpadilla.bsky.social links foraging behaviors with diversification in reptile species 🐊🐍🦎

Higher diversification is associated with both active and plastic foragers

#Evol2025 #Evol25

Graphs showing the evolution of foraging behaviors among 997 reptile species, expected number of state transitions as estimated by the model, and net diversification rates between clades defined by the foraging behavior of species.

Relative High Fitness and Genome-wide Diversity May Facilitate Plastic and Active Foragers' Diversification doi.org/10.32942/X26...

Evolution of plasticity and character displacement in a fluctuating environment

Our paper on evolution of plasticity and character displacement in a fluctuating environment is now published as early view in Evolution. Check it out if you're interested in eco-evolutionary dynamics, coevolution... and plasticity of course!
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

I'm hiring! Postdoc available in my lab in Ecological Genomics. northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/... I will start reviewing applications mid-July. 🧪🧑‍🔬🖥️🧬🦑. Please share widely, thanks!

Starting off the new year with great news. I’m officially a G. Evelyn Hutchinson Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. I’ll be working with both the Skelly and Munoz labs on the genomic basis of adaptation to climate change, and other topics. Exciting times ahead! 🧬🐸🦎

The case against simplistic genetic explanations of evolution Summary: Extreme traits in animals, from the origin of limbs to the loss of tails, capture public attention. This Review argues that scientists should not seek simple explanations for how they evolved...

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... be careful when making strong conclusion about complicated evolutionary processes based on genetic experiments that show large effect size - however tempting it might be :)

Fig. 1: The Chromosome number and Hidden State-dependent Speciation and Extinction (ChromoHiSSE) model. Panel (a) describes the event rates allowed in the model for both cladogenetic (upper) and anagenetic (lower) events. Panels (b) and (c) demonstrate those rates on a tree simulated under ChromoHiSSE. Branches that do not reach the present represent extinct, unsampled lineages. Panel (b) shows the anagenetic and cladogenetic changes in the hidden states, indicated by blue (i) vs orange (ii). Panel (c) shows the anagenetic and cladogenetic gains and losses of chromosomes, as well as speciation with no corresponding change in chromosome numbers. More red colors in (c) correspond to more chromosomes. The vertical blue and orange bars in (c) indicate clades in the blue (i) vs orange (ii) hidden states, displaying that chromosome number changes are less frequent in the blue hidden state than in the orange. The asterisk in (c) demarcates where a cladogenetic dysploidy event could appear as an anagenetic event because of unsampled lineages.

New study by @tribblelab.bsky.social @jimarcor.bsky.social @marcialescudero.bsky.social Michael May, Rosana Zenil-Ferguson and myself just out:

Introduces a novel HiSSE chromosome model and demonstrates the importance of chrom. evol. in #sedge diversity.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎁

a closeup photo of a timber rattlesnake showcasing the dark scales of the head that lighten toward the body. it appears to be looking at the camera but may also be staring into the depths of the photographer's soul.

Using a high-quality timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) genome, researchers found highly duplicated Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes in rattlesnakes, demonstrating a complex evolutionary history marked by extensive duplication and loss during speciation. 🧪

Code sharing in ecology and evolution increases citation rates but remains uncommon Biologists increasingly rely on computer code to collect and analyze their data, reinforcing the importance of published code for transparency, reproducibility, training, and a basis for further work...

I'd like to encourage folks to publish their code. Not only does it make studies more transparent and reproducible, but it also increases citation rates!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Michael Faraday delivering a Christmas Lecture in 1856 SOURCE: Alexander Blaikley (1816 - 1903) - Widely reproduced. See Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 2002, volume 56, page 370.

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures began in 1825 in London at the direction of Michael Faraday.

They were an opportunity to bring the general public to hear a lecture by an eminent scientist that captures the imagination.

They've been held every year since, except for 4 years during WWII.

Estimating dispersal rates and locating genetic ancestors with genome-wide genealogies A new method to infer the spatial history of genetic ancestors from a sequence of trees along a recombining genome.

Congratulations to Matt Osmond on publication of the final version of "Estimating dispersal rates and locating genetic ancestors with genome-wide genealogies"
elifesciences.org/articles/72177

I guess I am one of the few. We for sure need effective parameters in pop gen. But the idea that there is one scalar that will capture the complexity of population genetics and then can be used for the species as a whole and for every question is bonkers. And has been really damaging imo.

We show that despite the low policy compliance found by Culina et al. (2020), code- and data-sharing are much higher in journals WITH than WITHOUT a code-sharing policy:

1. Code-sharing: 27% (policy) vs 5% (no policy)

2. Data-sharing: 79% (policy) vs 37% (no policy)

📰 doi.org/10.32942/X21...

Our new preprint on designing the first custom SNP array for a #frog is out now! 🤩🐸🧬

Designed to improve conservation outcomes in the Endangered corroboree frog, we genotyped >900 frogs, looked at their population structure & diversity…

@keoghlabanu.bsky.social

doi.org/10.22541/au....

A high-resolution two-step evolution experiment in yeast reveals a shift from pleiotropic to modular adaptation Evolution is expected to involve mutations that are small and modular in effect, but recent findings suggest that mutations early in an adaptive process can have strong and pleiotropic effects. This s...

Do mutations that drive evolution improve many traits or few?

Does this change over the course of evolution?

Excited to share our work in PLOS Biology exploring these questions in the first 2 adaptive steps w/ Yuping Li, @gsherloc.bsky.social, @petrovadmitri.bsky.social 🧵

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

The structure of the environment influences the patterns and genetics of local adaptation Abstract. Environmental heterogeneity can lead to spatially varying selection, which can, in turn, lead to local adaptation. Population genetic models have

The structure of the environment influences the patterns and genetics of local adaptation

Sketch of IBD segments linking Medieval genomes from the Black Death (1350 CE) to modern Europeans. Logo of ERC-funded research.

PhD opportunity in computational population genetics at @MPI_EVA_Leipzig:
Join our fully funded project to develop IBD-segment tools, connecting high-quality genomes from 500 Black Death victims to modern Europeans. 🌍💻🧬
Please spread the word! 📢🙌 #aDNA #PopGen

www.eva.mpg.de/de/karriere/...