Prebilaterian Origin of Monoaminergic Signalling is out! This paper represents four years of work, not only mine, but friends and colleagues. I am particularly grateful to Tatiana Mayorova; without her help, this paper would not have been nearly as complete. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The @smbe-idea.bsky.social symposium at #SMBE2026 was packed with inspiring talks and thought-provoking discussion. Thank you for the opportunity to share how @projectpsyche.bsky.social & @10klepgenomes.bsky.social is making biodiversity genomics more inclusive!

Thoughts on traveling by train to 2 international conferences a bit far: Lausanne - Glasgow for #EED2026, 13h of train to, a bit more with a night train fro. Lausanne - Copenhagen for #SMBE2026, 22h each way including a night train. #NoFlyEED #NoFlySMBE #NoFlyAcademics

The beautiful colours and shapes of butterfly wings are shaped by natural selection and biomechanical constraints. Huge congrats to Dani and @vincentdebat.bsky.social for this new paper on the evolution of iridescence and hindwing "tails" in Eudamina skippers Paper: doi.org/10.1093/evol... 🦋

🦋🚀 @marcinwiorek.bsky.social from the @iseapas.bsky.social, gave a successful talk on @projectpsyche.bsky.social and @10klepgenomes.bsky.social at the 48th Symposium of the Lepidoptera Section, Polish Entomological Society held in Góra Świętej Anny, Poland, June 19–21. #10kLepGenomes #Lepidoptera

New data on insect pollinators show a dramatic decline in hoverflies across Great Britain between 2017–2024. 📉 Around one third reduction in abundance & number of hoverfly species recorded as part of @pomscheme.bsky.social www.ceh.ac.uk/press/new-da... 1/ @jncc.bsky.social 🧪

Did you know? The UK lost ¾ of its ponds in just one century 💧 Yet ponds support 2/3 of our freshwater species and urban ponds could be key to reversing the decline 🌎 🧪 Join Dr Rachel Walker to learn how to create & protect them 🔗 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1981358046... @barnescommon.bsky.social

🧬🦋 New preprint out! 🦋🧬 What mechanisms underlie large-scale chromosomal rearrangements? Why do rearrangement rates vary so massively across taxa? We explored these questions in Erebia butterflies, a genus with extraordinary chromosome number diversity, from 7 to 52! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧵 New paper! We’re excited to release OPTICS: software that immediately predicts color sensitivity from any opsin protein sequence. In other words: give OPTICS any opsin sequence, and it predicts the wavelength of light the pigment is most sensitive to 🌈👁️ academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Very excited to finally have this out in the world! The first paper from my PhD (and my first first-author publication) makes the case for a new entrant to the world of long-lived animal models: Heliconius butterflies. Out now in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/10)

Latest paper lead by Asia Hoile with @peterhox.bsky.social is out! 🦋 Nymphalid butterflies have reduced forelegs. Gene expression patterns show support for more palp-like genes involved in sensory processes in the forelegs relative to the walking legs. doi.org/10.1111/imb....

Whole genome duplications over 450 million years ago enabled the emergence of different kinds of brain cells 🧠 These cellular innovations are shared across vertebrates - from primitive fish to mammals - and form the basis of the sophisticated brains seen today 👇

Latest paper lead by Asia Hoile with @peterhox.bsky.social is out! 🦋 Nymphalid butterflies have reduced forelegs. Gene expression patterns show support for more palp-like genes involved in sensory processes in the forelegs relative to the walking legs. doi.org/10.1111/imb....

The new OrthoFinder paper is out now! In this new work, we introduce major advances in accuracy and scalability, allowing analysis on much larger datasets www.nature.com/articles/s41... github.com/OrthoFinder/...

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

Capolavoro 🎨 alert 🚨! What is the role of gene body methylation in invertebrates? Despite extensive speculation linking it to plasticity and environmental responses, its mechanistic effects and heritability remain unclear. Our take out in @natecoevo.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

📣🧬 Postdoc Alert🧬📣 We are hiring a 2+ year NERC-funded postdoc at Edinburgh Uni investigating causes and consequences of sex differences in recombination in house sparrows in Norway. Informal enquiries welcome at [email protected] 🙂 Details here: elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Abstract submission (and early-bird!) deadline for the BioSyst.EU approaches! You have until Sunday, May 31st to send it in! Join us and our fellow European systematics associations in Uppsala, August 17-19, 2026 for the 4th BioSyst.EU meeting! Details: www.trippus.net/BioSyst2026 #BioSystEU2026

Our latest manuscript on (Harry Potter and) the effect of elevated temperature on embryonic development in flies. Even a small increase in temperature causes developmental defects, indicating problems in the face of global warming! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ Our new paper in Systematic Biology "Modeling Site-and-Branch-Heterogeneity with GFmix" led by @cgpmcc.bsky.social describes improved ways to model compositional heterogeneity across both sites and branches—an important source of error in deep phylogenomics. doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Join us and our fellow European systematics associations in Uppsala, Sweden for the 4th BioSyst.EU meeting! Dates: August 17-19, 2026 Abstract submission and early bird deadline: May 31st Registration deadline: July 17th Details: www.trippus.net/BioSyst2026 We hope to see there! #BioSystEU2026

Our new paper is out now in Ecology Letters, completely open access! doi.org/10.1111/ele.... Many thanks go out to all of our co-authors, especially those who helped with the fieldwork in Peru - it wouldn't have been possible without you @climate-adaptation.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

Our new paper led by Christian Weinrich (PhD student, Andrew Forbes' lab at University of Iowa) is out in Insect Systematics and Diversity. We used unsupervised machine learning + UCE data to infer species limits in eurytomid parasitoids on US oak gall wasps—all initially thought to be Eurytoma.

🚨 We discovered a new mode of Hox gene regulation in annelids! 🪱 A distal enhancer acts as a "global control region", lifting Hox genes from Polycomb repression. This is reminiscent of Hox gene control in vertebrates, but the two modes likely evolved convergently. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

If you applied in the last few days and are worried that your application didn't go through, please email me and I can check (or apply again).

After a few technical glitches... 📣 Whelan lab is hiring 📣 We are looking for an entry level technician to help us with our culturing and DNA sequencing prep of cystic fibrosis lung microbiome samples. Applications close 28 May 2026 Any queries, please reach out!

📣 Whelan lab is hiring 📣 We are looking for an entry level technician to help us with our culturing and DNA sequencing prep of cystic fibrosis lung microbiome samples. Applications close 20 May 2026. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

🚨Job claxon🚨 4-year #Postdoc available in our lab in @camzoology.bsky.social developing molecular and anatomical approaches to mapping evolutionary changes in the brain, using #Heliconiini butterflies. Come join us, we are nice. 🧪 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Chironomids are wild!

True flies (order #Diptera) are amazing & under appreciated! Most people think only of house flies, but there's >160,000 described spp. w/many more to be discovered. They go by many names including mosquitoes, gnats, & midges. Check out the blue eyes on this predatory midge #Ceratopogonidae #FlyWeek

Roger Casement is remembered as a revolutionary & humanitarian, but new research reveals a surprising side to him- a lifelong passion for zoology. He even has a hawkmoth named after him (Gnathothlibus casementi). Dr Aidan O’Hanlon’s new @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social piece www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Please share: last week to apply for a PhD position on comparative and population genomics in high elevation butterflies 🦋

Post 1/2 Our new preprint is out! 🧬 We’ve extended #Tiberius for accurate ab initio gene prediction across the eukaryotic tree, including Plants, Fungi, Insects, and Diatoms. doi.org/10.64898/202...

That's a wrap! Thank you to everyone that came and exchanged ideas and experience and for @petermulhair.bsky.social for superbly hosting this meeting. Great things happen when >50 researchers come together to plan and do analysis for a week! Exciting times for @projectpsyche.bsky.social 🦋🦋🦋

📣 EvolDir is now managed by @eseb.bsky.social! We are delighted to be taking the reins and express our gratitude to both Brian Golding who began this service to the community in the mid-1980s and to @rdmpage.bsky.social who ran this account until now 👏 You can now find evoldir here: evoldir.net

🚨New PrePrint🚨 I am excited to share this comparative analysis of transposable elements in medusozoa genomes led by graduate student Ayanna Mays 🧬🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Massive milestone for Pine Hoverflies 🪰 🎉 Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms have now released over 30,000 Pine Hoverflies in the Cairngorms National Park: www.rspb.org.uk/scotland/new.... Thanks to the RIC partners, volunteers and landowners this threatened species can have a brighter future 💪

Thrilled to present our comparative study on the evolution of zygotic genome activation (ZGA)!! 🥚🧬 Amazing PhD work of @campobes.bsky.social together with @fedemantica.bsky.social and many collaborators! @melisupf.bsky.social @crg.eu. Thread below 1/15 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

well these are cute 🥲 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"men continued to publish the same number of papers after becoming fathers, women experienced a significant drop in research output (mothers had 31% fewer publications than did fathers 8 years after the birth of their first child)"

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

📢📢REMINDER LinneSys applications close this Friday, March 27th at 23:59 GMT+1!!!📢📢 Apply now! systass.org/linnesys/ Do remember to join the @systassn.bsky.social or the @linneansociety.bsky.social as a member first! Also, we only fund taxonomy and systematics related projects!

Applications are open for the LinnéSys Systematics Research Fund: we offer up to £1,500 for research in taxonomy & systematics - from fieldwork to equipment, specimen prep, and more. Open to researchers at any stage (UG+). Deadline: 27 March 2026, 23:59 Apply now: buff.ly/8eryOMN

The deadline for this year's LinneSys approaches! You have until Fri, March 27th at 23:59 GMT+1 If you're looking for a small grant for systematics work, get your application in ASAP systass.org/linnesys/ Just become a member of the @systassn.bsky.social or the @linneansociety.bsky.social first!

📣 The Whelan lab is hiring a bioinformatics postdoc 📣 Together with @fabricejpierre.bsky.social, we are offering a 1-year bioinformatic PDRA position in comparative genomics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To find out more please visit whelanlab.co.uk/contact/. Applications close 3 April 2026!

Nipam Patel exploring the common myth that caterpillars 'turn to goo" inside the chrysalis, with some beautiful visuals! www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCka...

Looking for a small grant for systematics work? Check us out! systass.org/linnesys/ Deadline is MARCH 27 at 23:59 GMT+1 All you need is to be a member of the @systassn.bsky.social or the @linneansociety.bsky.social Caveat, legally, we cannot fund anyone in these countries: tinyurl.com/wemwtfrz

Out in MEC! New study led by @dariashipilina.bsky.social links resource limitation as a driver of migration in the painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui). The authors show how resource cues reshape gene expression across development. Read more: buff.ly/dogof9L 📷: Daria Shipilina 1/2

Why do the chromosomes of cyperids (sedges & rushes) split and fuse so regularly on evolutionary timescales? Is it because they have so many centromeres? Our new preprint, the first major paper of my PhD, addresses this question. 🧵⬇️ 1/12 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two years thinking about genome evolution and how recent research revealing complex gene-gene interactions has complicated traditional ‘gene-centric’ genomic approaches to evolution. So here is a review that consolidates these thoughts! rdcu.be/e6pHY