David Marques was an amazing speciation genomics researcher, a passionate birder, and a wonderful friend, husband, and father. May he rest in peace. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

seminar announcement with photos of speakers and talk titles

The integration of speciation seminar series is restarting, with the first session coming up on *Tuesday March 3rd @ 5pm CET*, featuring two talks by @naturalselection.bsky.social and @andreaestandia.bsky.social + career Q&A with @markravinet.bsky.social as part of the ECR in Speciation theme.

A stylised colour logo of a house sparrow - the text reads "Oslo Sparrow Meeting 2026"

Do you work on #Passer #sparrows ? We want to bring together all sparrow researchers in a diverse array of fields. If you're interested then please join us for the Oslo Sparrow meeting in May! See here: www.mn.uio.no/cees/english... - sign up deadline fast approaching. Please share!

I don't usually like mentioning this - but it is not a promotion!!! Have you or anyone in your department used our textbook? If so, I'd love to hear from you and how you think it could be improved for a future edition: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

It's down right now - but Figshare?

Really looking forward to helping out on this! Please do spread the word if you or anyone in your groups would be interested!

Epigenetic Potential and Dispersal Propensity in a Free‐Living Songbird: A Spatial and Temporal Approach Natal dispersal is a key life history trait determining fitness and driving population dynamics, genetic structure, and species distributions. Despite existing evidence that not all phenotypes are eq...

Very excited about this work now out in
@molecology! We test whether🐦with ⬆️dispersal propensity differ in the nº CpGs across the genome, with the hypothesis that⬆️CpGs allow for⬆️epigenetically-driven plasticity facilitating environmental coping
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

To anyone else searching, this has been an extremely useful resource: udel.edu/~mcdonald/my...

Thanks Jannice - that is very helpful!

A while back (maybe 3-4 years?) there was a paper on common misconceptions of the genetics of various traits. One of them was eye colour in humans. I have lost this reference and can't find it anywhere. Does anyone recognise what I mean?

Host filtering and biogeography structure island bird gut microbiomes Gut microbiomes are central to host ecology and evolution, yet the mechanisms driving their diversification remain elusive, partly because host evolution and biogeography are often confounded. The rec...

Nice to see this preprint on the factors shaping Macaronesian chaffinch microbiomes out. A fantastic collaboration with @andalgalornis.bsky.social and his team. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

I'm missing #eseb2025 but the lab is well-represented 🤩

📊 Kenneth Aase: genomic prediction of crossover rates (Mon S03)
🎤 Lisa Ammer: sex-differences in CO landscape (Thu 11.30am S28)
📊 Gina Henderson: (no) selection on immunity (Thu S48)
📊 Marie Raynaud: recombination hotspot variation (Thu S02)

DeepKin: Predicting Relatedness From Low‐Coverage Genomes and Palaeogenomes With Convolutional Neural Networks DeepKin is a novel tool designed to predict relatedness from genomic data using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Traditional methods for estimating relatedness often struggle when genomic data i...

Our genetic kinship estimation tool “DeepKin” is now available! Our neural network models trained on simulated data work effectively on real ancient data from diverse backgrounds and often outperform available tools. @compevohumang.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I have arrived in Barcelona for ESEB 2025!

I will be talking about microRNA and the evolution of the mammalian placenta on Tuesday at 14:30 in Meeting Room 113
@eseb2025.bsky.social

🎤 Symposium: Evolution in Small Populations
I’ll be speaking on Evolutionary legacies of population collapse
🗓 Thursday, 11:00–13:15, Room 115

Looking forward to this #ESEB2025 week!

@hologenomics.bsky.social

Oh. Embarrassingly easy 😂

Marina Martín Maroto (@marinamartinmaroto.bsky.social) Envision PhD Student at the University of Nottingham investigating urban adaptation in birds 🐦🏙

marinamartinmaroto.bsky.social and especially the extensive and impressive PhD work from @jack-harper.bsky.social who sadly isn't here (he's writing up)!

Also, I'm talking at #eseb2025 on the evolutionary history of a commensal species at 2 pm on Monday in S51-02. Come along to hear about how cool house sparrows are and all the exciting work from the sparrow team @melissahrowe.bsky.social @eriksroeed.bsky.social @ruthfawthrop.bsky.social

Ok firing up bluesky again because I'm back from paternity leave and heading to #eseb2025 (with the kids too)! Can someone help an old Dino out and show me how to follow the conference hashtag?

On my way to #ESEB2025 ! I’ll share some new results showing bi-directional introgression of structural variants, which cause resistance to different insecticides, between native and invasive agricultural pests 🐛 Monday 10:30am, S05 rooms 120-121

Interested in host-associated microbiomes? Attending @eseb2025.bsky.social? Then come check out Symposium S07 on Monday August 18th and hear all about how microbiomes contribute to adaptation. Gut microbiomes, climate change, thermal physiology, behaviour, invasion biology, blood-feeding, and more!

Three very happy people, including a PhD student who just successfully defended her PhD and her two supervisors standing in a sunny garden in Cambridge, UK.

Black hat with knitted butterflies, laminated real butterflies, a DNA strand missing a bit due to CRISPR knockout, colourful dots resembling a GWAS plot and a small butterfly net.

Happy people celebrating with a picnic in a garden in Cambridge, UK.

Dr Eva van der Heijden (first PhD in my group, not on Bluesky) finished her PhD with flying colours and a new hat! The hat represents her PhD with CRISPR DNA, butterflies, a tiny net, GWAS dots, etc. What a great day of celebration! @sangerinstitute.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social

Knitting for Conservation: Awakkuna - The Intercultural Innovation Hub View projects awarded and supported by the Intercultural Innovation Award.

Many thanks to @emiliapsantos.bsky.social and @markravinet.bsky.social for challenging her as examiners and @chrisjiggins.bsky.social for being a wonderful second supervisor.

Note, the knitted butterflies are from Ecuador interculturalinnovation.org/knitting-con....

LinneSys: Systematics Research Fund LinneSys: Systematics Research Fund The Councils of The Linnean Society of London and The Systematics Association jointly administer this fund for the benefit of systematics research. The Fund has …

The LinneSys call is open!

Deadline: March 10th, 23:59PM GMT+0

All you need is a systematics-based proposal and to be a member of the @systassn.bsky.social or @linneansociety.bsky.social!

Don't leave membership applications to the last minute!

Apply: systass.org/linnesys/

PhD student in evolution of Diplotaxis in Cape Verde The Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics is offering a four-year PhD position focused on analyzing population- and species-level genomic data from museum plant samples. The project will employ cu...

[Position 2] on plants, repeated/parallel evolution, genomes, structural variants, ecological niches, w/ me, Filip Kolář, Mathieu Gàrdere, and others! 🍃

recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...

PhD student in Evolution of Indo-Pacific birds The Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics is offering a four-year PhD position focused on analyzing population-level genomic data from museum bird samples. The project will employ cutting-edge gen...

[please share widely!]

We have two PhD positions available at the Swedish Museum of Natural History:

[Position 1] Birds, hybridization, genomes, island biology, biogeography, sexual selection 🦚, w/ me, Knud Jønsson, Martin Iredstedt and @stelkens.bsky.social et al
recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...

Population Genomics of Adaptive Radiation Adaptive radiations are rich laboratories for exploring, testing, and understanding key theories in evolution and ecology because they offer spectacular displays of speciation and ecological adaptati....

Delighted to share our new review paper onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/.... This was a whole-lab effort for my group ~2021, and these students were a dream team 🤩 (yes it took us 4 years...but I'll take credit for that...turns out having a baby in a pandemic slows things down 😜).

Looking without bias is very hard to do. We want to “let the data do the talking” but data must be interpreted against backgrounds that are not bias-free.
I want to tell you about an experiment showing how when looking at a plot, we come with bias that frames our perception.🧵⬇️

Inversions contribute disproportionately to parallel genomic divergence in dune sunflowers - Nature Ecology & Evolution Analysis of habitat data, quantitative trait locus mapping of seed size and selective sweeps show parallel selection acting on inversions in two independent dune ecotypes of the prairie sunflower, Hel...

Excited to see this paper out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...