Excellent 2025 edition of the Swiss #Biology25 conference in Lausanne

Excellent talk by Isabela do O #Biology25, PhD student with @jgx65, showing how population structure can bias Qst-Fst selection tests, and how her new LogAV method can correct and account for population statistics. #PopulationGenetics #MethodsMatter

Anna Hewett #Biology25: Inbreeding depression in owls can manifest at different stages of growth, and statistical results depends on choice of inbreeding coefficient used -> Inbreeding depression exists but can be difficult to show in wild populations.

Terrific Darwin lecture by Katie Peichel last night! The informality of this great set up would prolly be more appreciated by Wallace 😉 #Biology25

Original post on ecoevo.social

I don't think I've ever seen a scientific talk which weaves so much and so well ethical concerns with scientific results as Andreanna Welch’s #Biology25 keynote. Now discussing helicopter science in relation to a study on cocoa farming ecosystems […]

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How to communicate our science? Terminology has the potential to perpetuate injustice, we should consider more our terminology and how we communicate. Yet communication with the public is important, and also has a cultural side. #Biology25 […]

Urbanisation impacts different birds according to their diets: more anthropogenic food (bread, seed feeders), less nutritious arthropods #Biology25
Blue tits do better in the winter in urban environments, but the food is lowerrquality -> less eggs, less success (less fledging) of chicks.

Andreanna Welch reminds us that Natural history museums are very important, but also have a difficult history linked to colonisation https://bluesci.co.uk/posts/natural-history-museums #Biology25.
Also, she’s solved the Procellariiformes phylogeny, but not yet published.

Original post on ecoevo.social

Procellariiformes seabirds are the order of birds with the largest size range, from storm petrels to albatrosses #Biology25. Their taxonomy and phylogeny are contentious, e.g. relation of the diving petrels to other members of the order. DNA extracted from museum collections have been key to […]

Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments - Nature Ecology & Evolution This Perspective presents a toolkit of evidence-based interventions to foster anti-racism in ecology, evolution and conservation biology in the classroom, within research laboratories and department wide.

3rd keynote of #Biology25: Andeanna Welch starts with a powerful reminder of both the biodiversity crisis and the lack diversity in people studying biodiversity (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01522-z

Follow Marc to get a look at what is happening in #Biology25! 💚

In different (cold) environments (Northern Scandinavia, Iceland, UK, Alps), , different interactions plants - herbivores, from strong top-down to strong bottom-up to almost no interaction.
Nice review and perspectives: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.20... #Biology25

Huge turnover (in Alps) from wild to domesticated mammals over last 6 ky, especially in last 4 ky. The largest impact on plant diversity is cattle, by far (above other domestic mammals, wild mammals, temperature, rainfall). #Biology25

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What drives alpine biodiversity? Sampling of lake sendiments over all the Alps 🇫🇷🇨🇭 🇮🇹 🇦🇹 shows a strong increase in plant richness in the last 4000 years, with a peaks ≈3 kya and ≈2 kya, which correspond to arrival of domesticated animals. Temperature does not appear correlated with […]

Metabarcoding allows to target organism groups, such as plants, while most of the non-targeted e-DNA is bacterial (SedaDNA = sediment ancient DNA). #Biology25

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Inger Alsos, 2nd keynote of #Biology25: studying paleo-ecology to understand present ecology. Ancient environmental DNA allows to move from studying single taxa (biased towards a few which preserve well, e.g. pollen or bones) to studying whole ecosystems. Focus: lake sentiments which allow to […]

Congratulations @abhishek11.bsky.social on winning the Zoology Prize from the Swiss Zoological society!! #Biology25

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Hourglass patterns everywhere? Kenneth Kim @nextstrain presents #Biology25 an inverted hourglass pattern (i.e. higher evolutionary divergence in the middle) in pan-crustacean arthropod moulting*, thus post-embryonic development.
* We collaborate with Allison Daley, Canadian palaeontologist, so […]

Exciting that next talk by Veronika Lipánová also found adaptation affecting pleiotropic genes in a very different system (Edaphic adaptation in the alpine carnation Dianthus sylvestris)! #Biology25

Estimates of molecular convergence reveal pleiotropic genes underlying adaptive variation across teleost fish Teleosts are the most diverse group of vertebrates on earth. Their diversity is a testament to the combined effects of genetic, developmental, and evolutionary forces. However, disentangling the interactions between these forces is challenging due to the complexity of the genotype-phenotype relationship and the masking of adaptive genetic signals by genetic noise. Estimates of molecular convergence where changes in the sequence of protein-coding genes lead to identical amino acid substitution across multiple lineages provide strong evidence of adaptive evolution. In this study, we estimated signals for molecular convergence in protein-coding genes across 143 teleost genomes to identify genes and processes that experienced adaptive changes. We find that genes with signals of molecular convergence are implicated in diverse processes ranging from embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, metabolism, to hormone and heat response. Some convergent substitutions are located on functionally important sites on proteins potentially providing the molecular basis for adaptations to hypoxia, salinity fluctuations, and varying skeletal morphologies. Additionally, single-cell RNA sequencing data from zebrafish showed that the convergent genes have dynamic expression across various cell types during embryonic development. These results highlight the functional importance of the convergent genes as well as their pleiotropic nature. Although traditionally considered a source of genetic constraint, we argue that adaptation via changes in pleiotropic genes are particularly advantageous during periods of ecological shifts. We present the pleiotropic release model which describes how adaptive variation on pleiotropic genes can have large fitness effects, allowing organisms to overcome selective pressures during periods of ecological shifts. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Great talk by lab member @dee_unil Agneesh Barua #Biology25 on convergent gene evolution and pleiotropy in fishes. Preprint v1 here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.... v2 with many new results coming soon!

Henry Youn #Biology25: microbiomes might be able to adapt to environmental changes faster than hosts: could host insects benefit from the microbiome’s fast evolution? (I wonder whether it could lead to maladaptation of the host to the microbiome?)

I won't post here the unpublished results, but fascinating talk by Susana Coelho. Invite her to your institute or conference and hear amazing stories of sexual reproduction, virus ecology, protein evolution, and more, with beautiful brown algae! #Biology25

Convergent recruitment of HMG proteins to sex determination in animals and brown algae! www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science... #Biology25

Origin and evolutionary trajectories of brown algal sex chromosomes Sex chromosomes fall into three classes: XX/XY, ZW/ZZ and U/V systems. The rise, evolution and demise of U/V systems has remained an evolutionary enigma. Here, we analyse genomes spanning the entire brown algal phylogeny to decipher their sex-determination evolutionary history. U/V sex chromosomes emerged between 450 and 224 million years ago, when a region containing the pivotal male-determinant MIN located in a discrete region in proto-U and proto-V chromosomes ceased recombining. Over time, nested inversions led to step-wise expansions of the sex locus, accompanying increasing morphological complexity and sexual differentiation of brown seaweeds. Unlike XX/XY and ZW/ZZ, brown algal U/V evolve mainly by gene gain, showing minimal degeneration. They are structurally dynamic and act as genomic ‘cradles’ fostering the birth of new genes, potentially from ancestrally non coding sequences. Our analyses demonstrate that hermaphroditism arose from ancestral males that acquired U-specific genes by ectopic recombination, and that in the transition from a U/V to an XX/XY system, V-specific genes moved down the genetic hierarchy of sex determination. Both events lead to the demise of U and V and erosion of their specific genomic characteristics. Taken together, our findings offer a comprehensive model of U/V sex chromosome evolution. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Brown algal sex chromosomes are conserved over 254 to 450 My www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.... #Biology25

Original post on ecoevo.social

Most brown algae have chromosomal sex determination U-V, distinct from X-Y or W-Z. Little difference in size between male and female gametes: after gamete fusion, inheritance of mitochondria and chloroplasts from both parents.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00497-021-00417-0 and many other papers by […]

Original post on ecoevo.social

First keynote #Biology25: Susana Coelho. Brown algae are the youngest complex multicellular group, they resemble plants but are an independent evolution of multicellularity, with many convergent features with plants: apical meristems, long range transport (≈ phloem), etc. Brown algae, like […]

Attending #Biology25 @unil.bsky.social in Lausanne today and tomorrow? wp.unil.ch/biology25/

🧬🐟🦐🌿🌳🔬💧🌐

Then look out for #talks & #posters from my group!

Lara Chaouat, Antoine Adde, Luke Ireland, Nalonda Chatterjee and Katarina Bičvić are presenting and are happy to talk about their research!

Daniele Silvestro #Biology25: supervised deep-learning estimation of substitution rates + unsupervised phylogenetic tree inference = semi-supervised approach to phylogenetic inference https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syae029

Jūlija Pečerska wins the #PhyloSIB title: “Evolution of evolutionary methods” #Biology25

Matthew Berkeley #Biology25: @SIB resource OrthoDB v12 has 5,827 eukaryote, 18,158 prokaryote genomes. It’s the basis for BUSCO, for evaluating genome completeness .