Our lab is recruiting 🐜🧬 : - PhD student, functional genomics, Chinese nationals only - Postdocs, population genomics, open internationally Lab info and contact: lab-darras.github.io Based at Zhejiang University 🇨🇳, one of the very best research universities in the world (tinyurl.com/4nb56pv6).

Minibwa is a hybrid of bwa-mem and minimap2 and the successor of bwa-mem for short-read mapping. ~4X/2.5X as fast as bwa-mem/bwa-mem2 for WGS reads at comparable accuracy. Native support of directional bisulfite-seq. Applicable to long reads. Preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2606.15357

🎉 New cover 🐜🐜🐜🐜

@hugodarras.bsky.social @chuanxinyu.bsky.social @bfeldmeyer.bsky.social @temnothorax.bsky.social et al. identify two large genomic rearrangements that determine an extreme reproductive polymorphism in an ant. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag115 #evobio #molbio

Genomics Aotearoa Webinar Monday 18th May 2026 at 2pm NZT Ehab Abouheif, Zhejiang University Evo-Devo and Climate Change: the double edge sword of novelty and extinction Register here: otago.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Researching while Chinese: The full story of what is happening to Chinese postdocs--and faculty members--at the University of Michigan and Indiana University www.science.org/content/arti...

This #InternationalWomensDay I want to tell the story of Lilian Vaughan Morgan. I learned of Lilian this past year - what a badass. Lilian was a leading scientist when women weren't welcome in the lab, nor even the department. But she contributed immensely to the genetics of sex determination 1/n

Nice !

1/ BRAKER4 hatched! The Earth BioGenome Project is on track to sequence ~1.5M eukaryotic species. Every one needs a structural annotation. No Perl monolith was going to survive that. So we rewrote BRAKER from the ground up. github.com/Gaius-August...

Ant folks 🐜🐜🐜, we are looking for colonies of Linepithema iniquum in Europe. They were reported from the Wales Botanic Garden a few years ago. Are you aware of any other indoor populations?

With @saramitri.bsky.social, @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social and L. Lehmann we’ve launched the UNIL Center for Theory in Ecology and Evolution @unil.bsky.social🇨🇭 To kick things off, we’re offering short visiting fellowships for theorists in ecology & evolution. Apply & pls RP 😀 tinyurl.com/2wem36zz

Congrats Duilio on discovering the 1st Toxin-Antidote system in vertebrates! 🎉He single-handedly established the embryo project in my lab!👍

🚀 New lab preprint on #SexChromosomeTurnover is out on @arxiv.bsky.social Huge congrats to lab thesis student for submitting his PhD @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social fellowship: big milestone and fingers crossed 🤞 and to all students for the submissions🤞🤞 More to come soon… 🐸🧬 arxiv.org/abs/2602.23624

Superbe !

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

I wouldn’t put it this way for research, as science isn’t about winning. But I also returned last week from China with similar sentiments about Chinese prowess. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/o...

🚨Hiring a postdoc! Are you interested in #evolutionarygenomics, #sexchromosomes, #transposableelements & #Sexspecific #recombination in 🐸🧬? Join my lab @vubrussel.bsky.social 🔹 @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social funded up to 3y 🔹 Deadline 10/3/2026 🔹 Start ~1/6/2026 Apply 👉: jobs.vub.be/job/Elsene-P...

Feeling grateful to be featured by @vubrussel.bsky.social #VUBTomorrow on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science👩‍🔬 The piece highlights our lab’s work on sex chromosome evolution🧬🐸 vubtomorrow.be/en/wen-juan-... @womeninstem.bsky.social #WomenInScience #WomenAndGirlsInScience #STEM

The most satisfying genome assembler to run, ever. Huge appreciation for the team behind hifiasm 👏

Amazing work

Yes!!

Yeah! Some #wasplove on the cover for our article on complementary sex determination. Photo from Nicolas Vereecken.

New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Apply for a PhD position in the Pan lab @miyapan.bsky.social at MPI Biology 🇩🇪 to study the molecular mechanisms and evolution of sex determination in haplodiploid insects 🐜🐝.

Junior professorship in evolutionary ecology of Hymenoptera, Frankfurt, Germany 🐜🐝

Celebrating a new building for our Center for Evolutionary and Organismal Biology at Zhejiang University 🎉, with an amazing symposium bringing together leading voices in evolutionary biology from around the world.

You are ABSOLUTELY NOT going to regret listening to this bird:

Join @miyapan.bsky.social’s new lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biology. Two PhD positions on ants to study the molecular mechanisms of complementary sex determination and epigenetic sex determination 🐜🐜🐜. Multiple PhD projects available in the Institute.

Beautiful!

New preprint from the lab: A reference brain for the clonal raider ant. With this resource, which is based on 40 individual brains, you can register and compare all kinds of samples in a common space. It comes with lots of detailed protocols and a user-friendly GUI. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Friday Flyday! A mating pair of big-headed flies, Pipunculidae, photographed in Texas.

@AntCommunity 🐜 🐜 Chengyuan Liu found a Camponotus ant colony where all sexual larvae have red spots of various sizes, but worker larvae don’t. Any idea what this is?🤔 Video in the comment.

I definitely wasn’t early to the Listers party, but I’m glad I made it. Can recommend to all birder adjacent and bird curious folks 🪶 m.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-w...

There’s a leak - and a conceptual artist - at the Max Planck 👌

"Striking diversity of male-killing symbionts and their mechanisms" by Hiroshi Arai (@haraipapilio.bsky.social), Daisuke Kageyama (@daisukekageyama.bsky.social) & co "Why [and how] do maternally inherited endosymbionts kill male hosts?" Find out here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Would a rose by any other gene smell so sweet?

Which species is that?

tinyurl.com/4twykhnx, tinyurl.com/2f72a6we Piekarski: “"If some environmental factor affects caste, it will affect size too,” “…As far as we can tell, no matter which environmental variable you manipulate, the [genetically encoded] relationship between ant body size and caste remains unchanged"

Invasive Tapinoma ants at Ingelheim station Germany are so determined they’re crossing rails to get food. Total takeover 😮

These NPG spinoff journals are out of control

PostDoc position @Uni Mainz (Germany) with @crltt.bsky.social and me #genomics #transcriptomics #Neurobiology to investigate the olfactory system of ants from genes to neurons Information: seafile.rlp.net/f/53a92045be...

We are launching the Fourth Edition of the Evolutionary Biology Crash Course ⭐ @evobiocc.bsky.social ⭐. There will be three weeks covering a myriad of topics in evolutionary biology with many practicals. Please RT to reach as many students as possible. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Spectacular !

Spectacular work !

Our new study on the emergence of the eukaryotic cell as an evolutionary algorithmic phase transition. The transition was continuous yet abrupt... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... See more results, such as the next scaling law in the entire tree of life:

I'm unreasonably proud of these slides.

3-Year PhD position @Uni Mainz (Germany) with @crltt.bsky.social, S. Foitzik, and me #Neurobiology #genomics #transcriptomics to investigate the olfactory system of ants from genes to neurons Information: seafile.rlp.net/f/5df9298781... We still have a postdoc position available for this project.

🤢