Very happy to share that I just published a new paper from my thesis! 🎉 We analysed 546 species of ant to understand how extreme specialisation into reproductive and non-reproductive roles evolved.  Key discoveries in thread🧵 👇 Full paper here: academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Se me está quedando pequeña la pared 😱

New preprint! Fungus gnats (Diptera: Sciaridae) have additional chromosomes exclusive to their germline cells. Using RNA-seq and cytology, we find evidence of low-level transcription from these mysterious chromosomes, plus a large bacterial insertion derived from germline endosymbionts.

Great to see this one published in Molecular Ecology 🐦 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... with @sheldonbirds.bsky.social @nilomr.bsky.social @jon-slate.bsky.social

Are you excited about pangenomics? If so, join us in Edinburgh on 8-9th June to discuss the latest methods & insights from using these approaches across biodiversity! More details here: royalsociety.org/science-even... Organised together with @henrylnorth.bsky.social & @joanameier.bsky.social!

Our paper on ancestral conditions of caddisflies (described in the quoted post) is now out! doi.org/10.3897/zook...

Yesterday @vibe2025.bsky.social I spoke about my work on mechanisms driving Rediploidisation after autopolyploidisation in the Acipenseriformes and Hox cluster Evolution in these fish! @wgdip.bsky.social

Heatwaves, poor diets, and parasitoids all stress insects, but not always in expected ways. New paper with @jinlinchen.bsky.social finds that Drosophila exposed to parasitoids survive extreme heat better than predicted. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

(1/5)Thrilled to announce our paper on #ProjectPsyche is out! 🦋We describe how we’ve generated 1000+ high-quality genomes for European Lepidoptera, providing an unprecedented resource for biodiversity, conservation, and evolutionary research. #Genomics #Biodiversity www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

I'm very excited that our paper on Project Psyche is now published! 🦋🧬 Over the last two years we've built an incredible community & already made huge progress. Read about this & how @projectpsyche.bsky.social will drive exciting and collaborative science here: www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

One of the most exciting projects I have ever been involved in: Project Psyche! Read all about our ambitions and aims. It's ground breaking stuff, just mind blowing and even surreal (27 years ago we did single genes for lep phylogenetics)! @projectpsyche.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨 Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social - employment benefits - 4 years funding - 1000% fun Deadline: 14/1/2026 Details: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Our website is back!!! 🎉🎉🎉 Also, if you have yet to register for this Wednesday's Joy of Discovery lecture (online at 3PM GMT+0), do so here: tinyurl.com/bdu5xans Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, will be giving a talk on the origin of feathers.

Our trilogy of orthology publications is online! Review on Hierarchical Orthologous Groups doi.org/10.1007/s00239-025-10277-1 OrthoXML-Tools doi.org/10.1007/s00239-025-10271-7 A great community effort on Quest for Orthologs in the era of Data Deluge and AI doi.org/10.1007/s00239-025-10272-6

a life changing opportunity made possible by the Nobel Prize funds awarded to John Sulston -- the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social runs the Sanger Prize scheme, open to an undergrad from any LMIC to spend 3 months here learning all about genomics. more details here www.sanger.ac.uk/about/study/...

The online Joy of Discovery event is back! 🎉 This year the event is going to be a smidge different, with a single speaker. But what a speaker! Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, will be giving us a talk on the origin of feathers. Join us NOV 26 AT 3PM GMT+0 REGISTER: tinyurl.com/bdu5xans

🚨#PhD studentship opportunity! Plasmids provide bacteria with antimicrobial resistance, but do they have more fundamental effects on behaviour? 🧫🦠💫🧟‍♂️ Apply for a 4y funded MRC DiMeN position with me and Jamie Wheeler @livuni-ives.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Lophophorates get way too little publicity... Latest issue is out! www.cell.com/issue/S0960-...

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

If you work on genomics of Lepidoptera in Europe and would like to do a short-term research exchange, you can apply for a short term scientific mission through our COST Action. See details below.

POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success

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

Join us! 🧬🪰🎉🔬 We are currently advertising two #PhD projects to study the #evolution, #development and #genomics of sexual traits in stalk-eyed flies. Deadline for applying is Wednesday, January 7, 2026. Get in touch for more info!

Another year of the @systassn.bsky.social's YSF conference complete. Another year of catching up with the talented early career systematists/taxonomists from across the globe, presenting thoughtful and exciting research on such a broad range of topics. Thank you to everyone who contributed!

Absolutely delighted to have been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship! I will be moving to the University of Manchester @mermanchester.bsky.social to research early endosymbiont evolution #microsky #symbiosky

Happy to share Jialin's first publication. She did a great job exploring the transition to land in animals. Co-supervised by the great Jordi Paps and me and in collaboration with Davide Pisani and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

A truly refreshing perspective on an age old debate. Big implications for animal evolution but also useful techniques to address many other remaining phylogenetic questions. Congrats to you both on a wonderful piece of work!

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Just gonna put this here for now www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... bsky.app/profile/jlst...

We are experiencing some issues with our website. We will let you know as soon as it is back in working order.

🌟 I’ve recently moved to The University of Manchester! I'm advertising several PhD projects on plant–microbe interactions 🌱🦠🪲 🧪🖥️ Projects span experimental to computational. Diverse supervisory teams, collaborating across the UK Plant Microbiome community. Details: www.findaphd.com/phds/?Keywor...

Hey Lep researchers! "Given the risks of transgene remobilization and instability associated with piggyBac transposases of lepidopteran origin, we urge researchers interested in developing transgenesis in moths or butterflies to consider using Minos-based tools."

Reminder, registration for this year's Young Systematists' Forum (Friday, Nov 14th), closes tomorrow at 13:00 GMT+0. Register: tinyurl.com/5n8mu5z9

PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social

Do you work (/want to work) with caterpillars? Or sensory systems? Or BOTH?! Well good golly do we have the paper for you! We explain the senses that caterpillars have, what they use them for, and how anthropogenic sensory pollution might be messing it all up 🐛 doi.org/10.1007/s003...

Lophophorata is monophyletic! Super excited to see this work out in Current Biology - we sequenced a phoronid genome and used shared chromosome fusions to confirm the monophyly of Lophophorata. A big team effort from the Luo Lab @yjluo.bsky.social! More here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3mV3QW8S...

Pleased to share our latest paper led by @tomlewin.bsky.social, now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We present the first chromosome-level genome of a phoronid and show that shared chromosomal fusions unite phoronids and bryozoans as sister groups. www.cell.com/current-biol...

My first Snow Flea (Boreus hyemalis) of the winter at Cali Heath @yorkswildlife.bsky.social reserve today. Nice of her to pose out in the open on a fallen leaf, so didn't need to spend hours waiting for one to emerge from the Polytrichum moss! @ynuorg.bsky.social #Mecoptera #Boreidae #ukwildlife

the only "honor" Watson's getting from me is that i've built a lab full of outstanding students who are everything he hated: Black, Indigenous, female, trans, queer, neurodivergent, disabled, immigrant, and beyond. he might be what the past of our field looks like- but the future looks like my lab.

On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Join us! We’re recruiting a PhD researcher to uncover how hedgehogs & other insectivores survive prey toxins. Dive into molecular evolution & protein biochemistry @shabmohammadi.bsky.social @livuni-ives.bsky.social @livuni-ismib.bsky.social @mpi-ce.bsky.social 🦔 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Come join the Workshop on Phylogenomics in Cesky Krumlov, Czechia, from January 25 through February 7, 2026! Applications close November 15! #phylogenetics #evolution #genomics #ai evomics.org/apply-worksh...

Nature Communications will publish ~10K papers in 2025 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov?term=%22Natu... That's ~$70M in revenue, while many of the non-profit journals that used to occupy that slot in the journal hierarchy have seen a precipitous decline in submissions in the 15 years it's existed.

Congrats to @graemelyons.bsky.social and Mark Telfer for an amazing discovery 👏👏🕷️ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Gelechioidea, that superdiverse superfamily of Lepidoptera that has been a super mess taxonomically, finally gets some structure at the family level with phylogenomics! Read all about it in our article led by PhD student @etkayapar.bsky.social ! resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

50 years ago, King & Wilson published a foundational paper that underlies the cis-regulatory paradigm (CRP) of #DevoEvo #EvoDevo, i.e., that *almost* all morphological evolution is driven by mutations in regulatory elements, rather than proteins, and it all arose from simple misunderstanding 🧪 🧵

New preprint! We unexpectedly discovered that some Caenorhabditis species delete parts of their somatic genome early in development, which fragments their chromosomes and eliminates key germline genes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest this bizarre process was present in the ancestors of C. elegans

My main PhD work @monteirolab.bsky.social is now in @natecoevo.nature.com! We found a Hox gene promoter that helps butterflies🦋adjust their wing eyespots in response to seasonal temperatures🍃🍂, shedding light on the evolutionary origin of phenotypic plasticity. 1/9 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A dumb question for taxonomic friends: who came up with the idea for type specimens? Everything I read defines things like holotypes, but doesn't explain where the bigger concept first came from. @americanbeetles.bsky.social @alexwild.bsky.social @morethanadodo.bsky.social