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Posts by James Kitchens

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Davis Summer Population Genomics Program Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

2 months ago 140 168 6 6

Can’t say I expected to do a foray into linguistics during my PhD - a fun study collaborating with Sam and many passionate undergrads (who have gone on to do incredible things of their own!)

I will have a poster at MGC later this month on this work - stop by and chat about it with me!

2 months ago 10 4 0 1

New paper! From Sam Snodgrass and @genomeofforrest.bsky.social, w/ @druncie.bsky.social, @gcbias.bsky.social, and a collaboration with Andres Moreno and @santiagogmm.bsky.social. Can we quantify the impact of humans on maize dispersal?

Plant yourself in a comfy chair and lend me your ear:

1/10

2 months ago 59 40 1 5
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Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies an ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, pollination occurs via a synchronized rhythm of floral sex timing between two hermaphroditic flowering types. A-type plants present female-phase flo...

Did you know there are 2 types of avocado varieties? A-types switch from female to male, B-types male to female, within a single day. This reciprocal sex alternation promotes cross-pollination and has a simple genetic basis. Read more in this recent preprint from the final chapter of my PhD thesis 🥑

3 months ago 104 49 4 2

Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.

3 months ago 142 61 1 3
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🧬 Just out in Bioinformatics Advances: “tskit arg visualizer: Interactive plotting of ancestral recombination graphs.” 

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf302

Authors include: @kitchensjn.bsky.social, @yanwong.bsky.social

4 months ago 18 13 1 0
Ecology, Evolution, and Working Landscapes

The UC Davis Ecology and Evolution in Working Landscapes REU provides undergrads with research experience in ecology and evolution in natural and managed landscapes. Apply now through Feb 15 via etap.nsf.gov

Contact me or @clhom.bsky.social for questions!

4 months ago 38 48 1 0
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The origins and adaptive consequences of polyploidy in a dominant prairie grass Polyploidy is ubiquitous across North American prairies, which provide essential ecosystem services and rich soil for agriculture. Yet the mechanism driving polyploid abundance is unclear. Multiple hy...

Super proud of @alyssa-phillips.bsky.social 's paper, now out on biorxiv! She resolves the origin(s) of polyploid big blue-stem, a dominant species in the midwest tall-grass prairie. Her common garden analysis also informs on environmental adaptation and hints at the impacts of polyploidy.

4 months ago 36 8 2 3
PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

The last work of my PhD is finally out: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...! This work is about accurately estimating branch length in the Ancestral Recombination Graph (ARG), which is achieved by a really simple framework with minimal assumptions. (1/n)

4 months ago 57 20 1 2
BAPG Fall 2025 Bay Area Population Genomics Conference @ Stanford

Super excited about our schedule for BAPG at stanford on Dec 6. bapg2025.github.io/bapg2025stan... Amazing talks, a fabulous keynote, a lively poster session. A brilliant and interactive community. What’s not to love? 1/2 @sophiejwalton.bsky.social

4 months ago 15 7 1 1
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Latest in #GENETICS: @petrelharp.bsky.social and the team show how non-coalescing haplotypes can be inserted into ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs), resulting in ARGs that are smaller, faster to compute with, and have additional ancestral information. buff.ly/X801LTO

5 months ago 10 4 0 0
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Early Career Scientist Awards 2026 Application to the UW-Madison Evolution Seminar Series - Early Career Scientist Awards.

Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for our Seminar Series' Early Career Scientist Award. Come share your evolution research and visit UW-Madison's evolution community. Open to grad students and postdocs (<5 yrs post PhD) from outside UW-Madison.

Apply by Dec 15th here: shorturl.at/4a4O6

5 months ago 38 54 2 1
Postdoctoral Research Fellow The department of Biology is a large, unified department with strong undergraduate degrees, nationally-ranked graduate programs, and world-class research spanning the breadth of biological questions a...

Hello bluesky community!

I'm hiring a postdoc to do machine learning in population genetics.
Starting to build up a lab at Indiana University Bloomington where I just started a faculty position.
Apply with the below link: indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/30325

8 months ago 26 45 1 1

Yes! And also we have an exciting announcement - we are so lucky to have the privilege of having Brenna Henn give the keynote. hennlab.ucdavis.edu

5 months ago 6 3 0 0

Donate to the UC Davis pantry give.ucdavis.edu/FASA/322731 & Yolo foodbank yolofoodbank.org?form=foodfirst if you can

5 months ago 5 3 0 0

With @aconga.bsky.social we wrote a short Dispatch to highlight two awesome companion papers in @currentbiology.bsky.social by @jeffgroh.bsky.social, @gcbias.bsky.social and by Liu et al. on how the control of heterodichogamy is going nuts in the Juglandaceae :

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

5 months ago 14 9 0 1
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GitHub - vibhachand/slim-TE-demography-simulation-project Contribute to vibhachand/slim-TE-demography-simulation-project development by creating an account on GitHub.

Writing a letter for a great undergrad researcher in the lab. Check out their awesome GitHub repo on the transposable element simulations they wrote in slim! github.com/vibhachand/s...

5 months ago 32 8 1 0

Marine bio folks: Does anyone know of any non-toxic aquarium safe paint that could be used to tag crustaceans?

I have been supergluing sequins onto the carapace of a mantis shrimp, but it falls off after several days. Looking for something a bit longer term/

Please RT!

5 months ago 1 2 1 0

Bumping this up one last time. I'm looking to hire graduate student(s) to work on an NSF-funded project to study elevational range shifts among dragonflies here in Colorado. @cudenverclas.bsky.social 🧪🌍🐙

Applications will be considered until Nov 1. See post below for more details

5 months ago 36 56 0 0
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Applied Biostatistics

Hey Yaniv Brandvain is not on Bluesky but his most recent biostats ebook is live ybrandvain.github.io/biostats/. His stats resources have been so helpful to me as I develop my own stats course, so check it out. Github repo here: github.com/ybrandvain/b...

5 months ago 86 51 3 3

Anyone looking for an undergrad research assistant this coming summer? I have a truly phenomenal undergrad with expertise in genetic mapping, long read sequencing & bioinformatics who wants experience in another lab before grad school. She has been in our lab for 3 years & writing her first paper!

5 months ago 50 26 8 0

I'm recruiting a postdoc for my group (based in beautiful Eugene, OR). Please get in touch if you're interested, esp if you'd like to chat at #ASHG25!

6 months ago 40 42 0 1

For population genetics and evolutionary biology folks in the Bay Area: the next BAPG will be hosted by Stanford CEHG and the Petrov lab at Stanford on 12/6.
Registration is free but required. The deadline for talk submission is Nov. 16. Hope to see you soon! Pls RT!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

6 months ago 40 31 1 2
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Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts In most species within the walnut family, two genetically determined morphs alternate between male and female flowering phases in time. Groh et al. identify a distinct locus for this dimorphism in two...

Sharing our new paper, "Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts". Genomics & evolution of a mating type system involving two morphs with alternating sexes in walnut relatives www.cell.com/current-biol...

6 months ago 37 15 0 1
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Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts In the angiosperm mating system of heterodichogamy, two hermaphroditic morphs temporally alternate between male and female flowering phases, promoting…

Congratulations to @jeffgroh.bsky.social on the publication of his paper on an ancient balanced polymorphisms controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts. The paper shows the putative turnover & reversal of dominance of a mating type polymorphism
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

6 months ago 63 32 2 0

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

6 months ago 163 210 1 5
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On ARGs, pedigrees, and genetic relatedness matrices Abstract. Genetic relatedness is a central concept in genetics, underpinning studies of population and quantitative genetics in human, animal, and plant se

Our paper (Brieuc Lehmann is the first author) is now online in Genetics.

academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

6 months ago 20 12 0 0

I want to try something again at #ASHG25 this year: I'll block some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet with trainees who would be interested to chat on any topic.

I did this last year and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people, at all career stages!

6 months ago 75 22 1 0
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Using modern coexistence theory to understand community disassembly Community disassembly examines how species extinction alters ecological communities. Sometimes, the extinction of one species can trigger the loss of others, known as secondary extinction. These secon...

Excited to share a new pre-print in collaboration with @sebastianschreiber.bsky.social, "Using Modern Coexistence Theory to understand community disassembly"! We set out to understand how techniques used to study coexistence can be extended to understand community disassembly. (1/X)

6 months ago 29 11 1 0