Variation in the genetic architecture of ecologically relevant traits along elevational gradients Abstract. Species are confined within spatial boundaries, which may be determined by various factors. An understudied one is the genetic non-independence o

So happy to see the 2nd chapter of my PhD out! doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Here, we studied populations sampled from their local elevational edges and centers on mountain slopes, and characterised the variation in G-matrices (comprised of growth and leaf investment traits) among these populations. 1/5

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸

We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.

The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

Digest: Drift and environmental fluctuations reveal fitness variance under balancing selection Abstract. Why natural populations harbor high additive genetic variance for fitness remains an evolutionary puzzle. Connallon and Czuppon (2026) show that

New Evolution Digest out! 🎉

Does balancing selection maintain fitness variance? Yes, when drift and environmental fluctuations are in play!

I discuss why this matters for plant adaptation to climate change. 🌱🌡️

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

@sse-evolution.bsky.social
@journal-evo.bsky.social

Nice to see this out! Thanks to all the coauthors. Really appreciate the work from the editors and reviewers at Evolution Letters.

The breeding season 2026 has started, our 72nd breeding season!

Excited to share my second thesis chapter is published today as part of this issue 🎉

Exploring variability in physiological traits between (and within) individual fish can help us understand how metabolic performance and growth rates change in response to factors like warming temperatures 🔥

🧪🐟🦑

Evolutionary adaptation to global change reduces sustainable fisheries yields Global warming is altering the fisheries that underpin food security, but projections of these impacts generally exclude evolutionary processes. We describe a model that forecasts how fish will adapt ...

Fish will have to adapt to a warming world, what will that adaptation do to fisheries yields? We answer that question today in Science. I’ll summarise our findings very briefly in this thread
www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

Rapid evolution predicts demographic recovery after extreme drought Populations that are declining as a result of climate change may need to evolve to persist. Although evolutionary rescue has been demonstrated in theory and in the laboratory, its relevance to natural...

What an amazing feat- congrats to everyone!!!!!!!!!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Photo of a Senecio daisy in front of a stone hut

Happy to share out latest work in Ecology Letters!

We show how how genetic differences in plasticity determine fitness at different environmental scales from native to novel elevations.
@jonbridle.bsky.social @jameswclark.bsky.social

Many thanks to the reviewers!

doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Phenotypic plasticity is broadly adaptive across an elevation gradient in the Cutleaf Monkeyflower Phenotypic plasticity is a key mechanism by which organisms can cope with environmental heterogeneity, but its evolutionary consequences depend on how plastic responses align with the broader adaptive...

Preprint up now! With @ferrisifolius.bsky.social, we found positive selection on leaf shape plasticity across the altitudinal range of the cutleaf monkeyflower. This experiment was a HUGE personal undertaking. If you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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

Alignment across taxonomic levels in strategies rather than in traits along elevational gradients Abstract. Trait variation along environmental gradients can indicate the different strategies that organisms have evolved in response to environmental hete

A bit late, but really happy to see my first PhD paper out!
We studied trait-elevation relationships in multiple traits spanning growth, size (both above and belowground) and leaf economics to understand whether these align at within- and among-species scales.

academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in long-lived ...

1. My first ever paper is out! With
@euantheyoung.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
How do older siblings, and their sex and age, affect the survival of younger siblings? Find out by checking below.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Variation in temperature but not diet determines the stability of latitudinal clines in tolerance traits and their plasticity | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Latitudinal clines are routinely used as evidence of adaptation across broad climatic gradients. However, if environmental variation influences the strength of latitudinal clines, then clinal patterns...

First post here 😬 .. hi everyone!

Our new paper is the first from my short foray into a non-plant system! [don't worry, back to plants!]

We show how clinal patterns in climate tolerance and plasticity are environment-dependent! doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Thanks to ProcB and the reviewers!

I'm looking to recruit a PhD student to study patterns of local adaptation and introgression across the spruce hybrid zone in the Rockies near Calgary. Projects can include field work, bioinformatics, pop gen theory, or comparison to plant/ conifer species
yeamanlab.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/...

and, @stuartmcdaniel.bsky.social !

My favorite part of this paper: the collaboration started after I sent Meng a biorxiv preprint from Stuart's lab.. She contacted him with questions about that work, and the collaboration grew from there.

Evaluating the roles of drift and selection in trait loss along an elevational gradient The evolutionary mechanisms underlying loss or retention of traits that have lost function are poorly understood. Short stamens in Arabidopsis thaliana pro

Sophie Buysse's paper on short stamen loss in Arabipsis is published in this month's Evolution issue!! academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... @journal-evo.bsky.social

John Maynard Smith on adaptationist cleaning up their act following the spandrels paper.

From Dinosaur Dilemmas, NYRB
April 25, 1991.

SO excited for #Evol2025 @sse-evolution.bsky.social!!!!!!! The Coughlan lab has a stellar line up of folks giving talks (on lab projects and beyond!)- please check them out! We welcome all feedback and would love to hear from you!!!

I'm so excited to be at #evol2025!! Lab talks: "Adaptive and maladaptive plasticity in leaf number among populations of A. thaliana" from Sophie Buysse at 9:30 in Sunday in Adaptation V

Leaf venation: structure, function, development, evolution, ecology and applications in the past, present and future The design and function of leaf venation are important to plant performance, with key implications for the distribution and productivity of ecosystems, and applications in paleobiology, agriculture a....

Shout out to this excellent & thorough paper:

Leaf venation: structure, function, development, evolution, ecology and applications in the past, present and future

A compendium, really, especially if you include the supplemental info. #PlantScience 🧪

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

How many times have buzz pollinated flowers evolved? Read the latest version of our preprint here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @draverbee.bsky.social @roszenil.bsky.social

Please pass along - postdoc position! with our working group on #FunctionalTraits and rarity. This is part of the FREE (Functional Rarity in Ecology and Evolution) working group led by Cyrille Violle in Montpellier France 🧪🌐🌾 emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species Abstract. A key prediction of neutral theory is that the level of genetic diversity in a population should scale with population size. However, as was note

Hey, Miles' @milesroberts.bsky.social beautiful paper showing that sequence diversity missed by standard methods contributes to Lewontin's paradox is officially published in @evolletters.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years:

Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
All data available: www.grene-net.org/data

#MOILAB
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

🧵👇

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...

Multi‐response phylogenetic mixed models: concepts and application The scale and resolution of trait databases and molecular phylogenies is increasing rapidly. These resources permit many open questions in comparative biology to be addressed with the right statistic...

📢 New publication 'Multi-response #phylogenetic mixed #models: concepts and application' by Ben Halliwell, Barbara Holland and Luke Yates in Biological Reviews 🧪

doi.org/10.1111/brv....

Repeatability of evolution and genomic predictions of temperature adaptation in seed beetles - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors compare genomic and phenotypic changes between genetic backgrounds of seed beetles evolved at hot or cold temperatures. Despite phenotypic changes being more rapid and predictable at hot t...

Finally out: Predicting adaptation to climate warming www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We find that there are many genomic routes to heat-adaptation, but this can also make genomic data of limited value for prediction. A tour de force by @denovorego.bsky.social , with @stelkens.bsky.social.

Very happy and humbled to have received this award. A huge thanks to all my wonderful colleagues @scienceanu.bsky.social and abroad who made this possible!

Currently developing a workshop for postdocs on mentoring and managing in EEB! What are some topics/pieces of advice you'd have wanted to learn about as a postdoc?