@phylieu.bsky.social and I have another paper in our informal series, “we worry about diversification rates.” This time, how to get unbiased estimators of speciation & extinction, even when looking at small clades as part of MiSSE, CLaDS, etc. models.

Overview: brianomeara.info/posts/biasco...

The final "Early Career Researchers in Speciation"-themed seminar is coming up on the 5th of May!

This session features talks by Aryeh Miller on Anolis lizards 🦎 and @rishidekayne.bsky.social on speciation research in industry 📊

+ we'll hear from Dr Mariana Braga about her career in the Q&A ✋

We just published a review 🗞️😁:

‘The ecology of adaptive radiation’ revisited: A 25-year reflection

Dolph Schluter’s book inspired the interest in adaptive radiation, and we wanted to revisit it.

academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

1/5 🧵

‼️🚨 Job Alert ‼️ 🚨
Two Post Doc Opportunities:

PDRA in Macroecology / Paleobiology
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

PDRA in Extinction & Conservation / Paleobiology
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Any questions, please get in touch! Closing date May 1st.

📑📊We have just uploaded a new pre-print where we decompose spatial, temporal and spatial-temporal variation in natural selection on reproductive traits for great tits and blue tits.
With Yimen Araya-Ajoy, @ellafcole.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨New preprint out @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social (under review elsewhere!) 🧵

No global collapse of food webs across the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME)

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

The making of novel ecosystems: A process‐based framework for measurement, analysis and application Ecological novelty is emerging rapidly due to global change drivers such as climate shifts, species introductions, defaunation, and land-use transformation. These changes challenge how we assess, ...

Our new paper presents a framework for analysing the processes that generate novel ecosystems, discussing different conceptual and practical approaches across ecological disciplines. You can read it, open access, in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In #GENETICS, @hildeschneemann.bsky.social and John Welch introduce a simple fitness landscape model to predict hybrid fitness with arbitrary ploidy and an arbitrary number of hybridizing lineages using data from #maize and rye. buff.ly/E24fZsM

On March 3rd @ 5pm CET, we are re-starting the Integration of speciation seminar series! The first 3 sessions feature talks by *Early-Career Researchers*, and include a Q&A with an established PI about their career path.

Sign up to get the link: speciation-network.pages.ist.ac.at/seminar-seri...

I am looking for a PhD student to join my new Socio-Eco-Evo group, hosted in Katie Peichel's Evolutionary Ecology Division @ University of Bern. We're offering a fully funded 4-year position, studying social plasticity and behavioral adaptation among stickleback in Greenland. Please share around!

Diverging selection on body size in specialist terrestrial mammals Nature Ecology & Evolution - A comparative analysis of trait data combined with a mathematical model suggests that dietary specialization drives selection towards the smallest and largest body...

New paper out with a combo of empirical patterns and theoretical models to propose a new ecological mechanism undelying body size evolution rdcu.be/e06Vt

If you’re interested in extinction risk, please check out our new paper in @science.org led by my former PhD student Cooper: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Genomic analyses in Drosophila do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation Abstract. The allopatric model of speciation has dominated our understanding of speciation biology and biogeography since the Modern Synthesis. It is uncon

New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]

Quantifying the unrecorded loss of avian phylogenetic diversity Humans have drastically reduced avian diversity, with the majority of extinctions occurring on islands. Previous studies have quantified various aspects of this decline, including both taxonomic and ...

🚨 New paper out in @ecography.bsky.social ! 📝

Led by Dr. Søren Faurby, we built upon the estimated unrecorded bird extinctions by @r-cooke.bsky.social et al. 2023 and try to estimate the corresponding unrecorded loss of phylogenetic diversity. 🦤🧬

Check the full paper here:
doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

The collision of two genomes threatens global food security Human activity alters selection pressures and species' ranges, creating opportunities for hybridisation through secondary contact. Ancient hybridization has enabled adaptive radiation, but its role in...

Excited about our new preprint showing bidirectional adaptive introgression between invasive and native crop pests over ecological timescales www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Imputation of ancient canid genomes reveals inbreeding history over the past 10,000 years | PNAS The multi-millennia-long history between dogs and humans has placed them at the forefront of archaeological and genomic research. Despite ongoing e...

Our paper in the PNAS Special Feature on 🐕 is out!
We demonstrated the accuracy of imputing ancient canid genomes, looked at inbreeding levels over the past 10,000 years and found genomic regions resistant to ROH which were enriched for immunity and chemosensory genes.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cool paper on rate-time scaling: it’s not just an artifact! We need to re-think underlying evolutionary processes generating (fossil) phenotypic changes! By @vildebruhn.bsky.social @kjetillsj.bsky.social

How time, climate, and storage shape DNA survival in herbarium specimens - and why plants from the tropics face tougher odds 🌿🧬
#AncientDNA
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

A mosaic of modular variation at a single gene underpins convergent plumage coloration The reshuffling of genomic variation from multiple origins is an important contributor to phenotypic diversification, yet insights into the evolutionary trajectories of this combinatorial process and ...

doi.org/10.1126/scie... #speciation #hybridization #ornithology

Loss of macroevolutionary species fitness explains the rise and fall of clades - Nature Ecology & Evolution The interplay between speciation and extinction rates shapes clade diversity dynamics. Using a novel phylogenetic model that includes living and fossil lineages, the authors estimate speciation and ex...

Excited to share our new paper where we find that the rise, decline and fall of clades is not explained by the usual suspects (diversity-dependence, ecological opportunities) but rather by species' insidious loss of macroevolutionary fitness: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/3

Human impacts on large mammals went well beyond triggering late Quaternary mass extinctions. A new paper by Brook et al. showing that biogeographic patterns were erased by the spread of domesticated species:

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A related paper is in press. Stay tuned.

The genomics of discrete polymorphisms maintained by disruptive selection Disruptive selection can lead to the evolution of discrete morphs. We show that particular genetic architectures, in terms of dominance, epistasis, and linkage, are likely to evolve to produce discret...

"The genomics of discrete polymorphisms maintained by disruptive selection"
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...

Extreme climate events can catalyze rapid evolutionary change! in our new Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social) piece, Colin and I argue it’s time to study their evolutionary consequences systematically — beyond opportunistic observations. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Emerging uses of artificial intelligence in deep time biodiversity research - Nature Reviews Biodiversity This Perspective explores the existing and potential applications of artificial intelligence in deep time biodiversity research as well as offer guidelines on equitable and ethical use of artificial i...

Check out our perceptive on the Emerging uses of artificial intelligence in deep time biodiversity research www.nature.com/articles/s44...
#AI #paleontology

Our paper, led by Eva van der Heijden, shows the work of an international team combining phylogenomics, hybridisation tests, population and comparative genomics and pheromone analyses to resolve the taxonomy and evolution of two rapid radiations of glasswing butterflies. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A new time tree of birds reveals the interplay between dispersal, geographic range size, and diversification Flight may affect the dispersal and evolution of birds. Using a new evolutionary tree, Claramunt et al. find that efficient fliers have broader geographic ranges, and speciation reduces range size, bu...

🚨 The New Age of global bird phylogenies continues!

Hot on the heels of the fantastic updated tree created by @eliotmiller.bsky.social and others, we use a different approach to generate a near-comprehensive timetree of >9000 bird species. 1/3

www.cell.com/current-biol...

🧪🌐🪶

enormous phylogeny of ~700 Grevilleoideae plants plus outgroups with major tribes and fossil calibrations highlighted

New paper out today in @pnas.org presenting near-complete phylogeny of the Grevilleoideae subfamily of Proteaceae plants, representing years of work and huge collaboration from an amazing team - ft. @marcelcardillo.bsky.social @hsauquet.bsky.social @austinmast.bsky.social and many others not on bsky