It's official! We are moving to Stowers! Very exciting opportunity to expand our studies of insect-plant interactions. We have many opportunities available in biochemistry, development, behavior, genetics, evolution, genomics, AI, and even pest control. Interested in any of these things? Reach out!

Calling early-career developmental biologists! Apply for a funded place at our #Workshop, Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution. Application deadline: 5 December www.biologists.com/workshops/ju... #DevBio #BiologistsWorkshops #Collaboration #Networking

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

Our lab is 2.5 years into #ERC funding✨ Grateful for the support that enabled us to uncover the syncytial nerve net in a ctenophore - a discovery reshaping our understanding of nervous system evolution. Stay tuned for more exciting discoveries to come @erc.europa.eu www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DAE...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage. When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig. Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

Look at this crazy thing! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

USDA post-doc position in Hilo (HI) in new lab of Chan Heu. Functional genomics (CRISPR, RNAi, transgenics, etc.) in tephritid pests of agriculture. www.zintellect.com/Opportunity/...

Another big paper by Francesco and members of the lab @ebablab.bsky.social. 😍👏

Among insects, lepidoptera 🦋 show one of the most diverse photoreceptor types 👁, explaining diverse spectral sensitivities including a convergent evolution of red vision. Lu & Kronforst review the lepidopteran eye evolution. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

how I feel using the keyence

Orange tip, Anthocharis cardamines. Five years after I found the butterfly, I was finally able to photograph the caterpillar and the pupa 🎉

Enhancers are "just DNA" - finding all of them in the genome is hard. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re growing @arcadiascience.com & are on the lookout for talent to run new pilot projects contributing to our broader goals. Seeking computational + wet lab fluency to iterate independently on new projects. If you’re a creative scientist w/ ambitious ideas, apply! jobs.lever.co/arcadiascien...

@mcgregorlab.bsky.social and I had the pleasure of writing a dispatch article discussing the latest work from @gavinrrice.bsky.social and @rebeizlab.bsky.social. You can find it over on this link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

So excited to share this preprint from the Rosin lab in collaboration with the Hawley lab and @eelcotromer.bsky.social on moth spermatogenesis! We investigate the meiotic errors that occur during the formation of apyrene sperm (that have no DNA) in silkworms! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks for the amazing science from your group, Joana! 👍 The butterflies took us on a fascinating flight into the tangled chromatin genealogies in the fragrant rainforest community evolving through Pleistocene glacial cycles. 🏔️Such a rich piece!! #biogeography #genomic #speciation shorturl.at/8AVQT

New research on glasswing butterflies🦋 by an international team of researchers, including @joanameier.bsky.social and Prof @chrisjiggins.bsky.social offers fresh insights into insect evolution and may help shape more effective conservation of these species. Read more: bit.ly/4oi4XUo

Very lucky to be at UCSF with such great microscopy facilities. These instruments are definitely pushing the limits of what we thought feasible in live imaging! Excited to keep exploring how these single cells organize and secrete such precise morphologies.

1/5 ✨Proud✨ to see our review with Katie Peichel as featured content in Trends_Ecol_Evo, with my beloved alpine lineages of Arabidopsis arenosa on the cover. Hope that you find it interesting! doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2023.11.007

Super excited for this chance to share our @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social #preprint, in wihch we ask a simple question – what were the genomic of gorillas evolving polygyny? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Transgenic Plodia larvae expressing the very bright mBaoJin (mStayGold variant) in its silk glands. Also some gorgeous 3xP3:mCherry staining of larval ocelli and glia. (see revised preprint) by pantry moth wizards @donyaniyaz.bsky.social & @lucalivraghi.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Preprint alert from the lab @jasminealqassar.bsky.social led this elegant study of gene expression in the silk glands of our favorite alternative "silk worm", the pantry moth. Mega-polyploid cells with thousands of genome copies just to express a handful of proteins doi.org/10.1101/2025...

So very excited for the magnum opus of my #PhD to finally be out in @pnas.org. 🎉🎉 We demosntrate that mutualistic co-mimicking tropical butterflies not only converge in light microhabitat but, as a consequence, have also converged in visual system morphology! 1/n😀 www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Looking to get involved in peer review? Check out the Fast & Fair initiative run by @biologyopen.bsky.social. journals.biologists.com/bio/pages/fa... #PeerReview #PaidWork #Journals #Academia #Research #Biology #BiologyOpen

"We name [this gene] Redboy based on its functional role in the programmed body colour transition of orchid mantis, reflecting the demon ‘Red Boy’ who changed his red clothes to white after becoming a fairy in Chinese mythology" www.nature.com/articles/s41... #evodevo #colsci

1/2 🧬🎨 When gills do Pointillism! For this #FluorescenceFriday, here’s a dissected gill arch expressing nuclear fgf10b:nEOS — depth color-coded: blue for medial filaments, yellow for lateral ones. #Zebrafish #DevBio #Microscopy #Gills

Excited to advertise a shared PhD position at KU Leuven (Belgium) and Mondsee (Austria) with @markusmoest.bsky.social on the genetic basis, plasticity and evolution of melanization in Daphnia from alpine lakes. Apply here: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🥁 and the answer is : Branched polyploid nuclei in the silk glands of a Plodia pantry moth larva. At least 8,000 genome copies (DOI: 10.1139/g2012-060).

⭐ Can anyone guess what this is? ⭐ 🔎 hints 🔍 - finding out will make your head spin! - image ~ 100 um wide.

🚨Postdoc opportunity🚨: LepEU postdoc: comparative population genomics of European scale adaptation in butterflies 2 year, full-time PD in my group, Stockholm Univ. Applications assed on rolling basis, deadline: 23 August 2025. Planned start 1 Oct. Details: christopherwheatlab.wordpress.com

Excited to share our study on sailing siphonophores, AKA bluebottles or man-o'-war! 🌊 we received hundreds of samples from scientists around the world, part of a huge effort to sequence genomes and test for multiple species 🧬 out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... 🦑🧪📌

Check out our deep dive into the molecular genetics of male-specific cell type : the gorgeous UV-iridescent scales of Sulphur Butterflies by lab wizards 🦋🔬 🖥️ 🧬 Ling Sheng Loh @hanliconius.bsky.social and a big team 1/n

I am delighted to be starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the University of Florida in January 2026. The lab is broadly interested in the functional, developmental, and evolutionary genetics of cell types and organs across flies and beyond 🪰🧬

🚨Anyone want a job?🚨 We have two #postdocs up for grabs! 🧪 - cell developmental biology/#evodevo/#neuroevodevo - bioinformatics and molecular biology Both working on brain evolution in Heliconiini butterflies Details below! Please repost 🙏 1/n

when this was demonstrated in mammalian embryos, I enjoyed this commentary: " this study highlights that a dialogue is needed to reshape the legal definition of when life begins, so that it is supported by up-to-date scientific knowledge." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

While helping out on a cool genomics project recently, I came to realise I’d been taught a pretty big inaccuracy about the events that occur at fertilization. I suspect that almost everyone reading this has the same misapprehension, so let’s do some learning together: 1/

How to find Evolutionary Conserved Enhancers in 2025? 🐣-🐭 Check out our paper - fresh off the press!!! We find widespread functional conservation of enhancers in absence of sequence homology Including: a bioinformatic tool to map sequence-diverged enhancers! rdcu.be/enVDN github.com/tobiaszehnde...

Dr. Wild's Big Gallery of Bug Sex

Many cells during development are exposed to caspase activation and yet survive. Why some die and not others ? We found out that the memory of previous caspase activation bias significantly later death comitment and bias death distribution and single cell decision www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I generally dislike this kind of perspective and argument about semantics. But I very much liked this one. My own definition of domestication has been basically this for some time, but the authors lay it out better than I could have, with lots of relevant arguments about the nature of domestication.

New preprint from the lab, led by grad student Brandon Pratt, on the encoding properties and sensorimotor function of proprioceptive limit detectors (ie, hair plates) in the fly leg. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"Aboral cell types of Clytia and coral larvae have shared features and link taurine to the regulation of settlement" Kudos to Julia Ramon-Mateu and Anna Ferraioli @biodev-vlfr.bsky.social, and thanks to our collaborators for their coral larva expertise www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What you're looking at here isn't an AI glitch. These are "Sishui Fur sheep" with 2- and 4-horn phenotypes. The sheep on the right is polycerate: "multi-horned". Let's talk about the why/how of polycerate bovids. But first, a brief departure into homeotic (Hox) genes.

Paracantha fruit fly, just cranking the style slider to 100 and seeing what happens. I love it, is what happens. 💛

Really happy to share our new preprint on the central complex of Heliconiini butterflies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Check it out! @neuroethology.org @brainevolutionnews.bsky.social @prelights.bsky.social @tibbe-evolneuro.bsky.social #brainevolution #heliconius #centralcomplex

(1/4) 📣 Exciting news! 📣 The #10KLepGenomes COST Action has opened the first call for Short Term Scientific Missions #STSMs Keep reading for all the details 👇