A sex-determining gene region in ants, bees, and wasps has maintained its function for over 150 million years through its chromosomal position rather than its DNA sequence, as evidenced by the lack of sequence homology among lineages. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/n9eU50XWipU

🐜 4-year #postdoc position in the @socialfluids.bsky.social lab @camzoology.bsky.social investigating metabolic cooperation between bodies in a BBSRC-funded project. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc... #ants #socialtransfers #sociallytransferredmaterials #autophagy #socialinsects #aging #job (🧵1/n)

Great new paper! Many stinging wasps, bees, and ants have controlled the sex of their developing eggs for millions of year using an ancient segment of their genome- always the same segment- but what's weird is, *the exact DNA sequence of that segment doesn't seem to matter*.

🚨New paper from our team on our favorite sex locus ANTSR! 🚨New collaboration with @hugodarras.bsky.social , led by our talented @chuanxinyu.bsky.social, we show that ants, bees and stinging wasps share an ancient sex locus, a suspicion we had when we first found the locus in the Argentine ants!

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 🐜🐝.

🚨Interested in selfish elements🧬? non-canonical patterns of inheritance🧬? Then don't miss out on this EMBO workshop in Bern! Amazing lineup of speakers, covering evolution, genomics, molecular mechanisms, and more! Deadline extended! Travel grants and registration fee waivers still available!

One week left to submit abstracts for the EMBO workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies! In Bern (Switzerland), from 8 to 11 February 2026. meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel... #EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

🎉 Our deconstructed, stem-cell–based approach to studying signaling centers and limb-development cell types is out! 🥳 So nice to see it in its final form after the preprint— and huge thanks to the community for all the enthusiasm and interest since then! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share that I’m starting a research group at MPI for Biology Tübingen — and we’re recruiting PhD students! We are offering two fully funded PhD positions on sex determination and development in Hymenoptera 🐜🐝. Please share with prospective students who might be interested.

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

***Super cool-project alert***⚠️ Come work with @dirkmetzler.bsky.social and me in trying to understand how transcriptional noise evolves in a phylogenetic context 🧬 Deadline 15th Dec 2025 (Project funded by @dfg.de @gevol.bsky.social)

Team fish - we need your help! We are trying to build a database of all the fish chromosome-scale genomes where sex chromosomes have been identified. Have you build one or some? Do you know someone who has? Can you post the link in the comments? Please spread the word and repost! Thank you!

"When the female bugs lay their eggs, they rub the cultivated hyphae across the egg mass. The hyphae grow to envelope the eggs and physically exclude attentive parasitoid wasps until the bugs hatch." #fungi #symbiosis

Parental care, and more complex cooperative systems of care, have independently evolved in hundreds of animal lineages. In an article published today, we explore how these behaviors evolve 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭l shorturl.at/g5OPw /1

Job alert🚨📢! Join us as Director of the SIB Centre for Pathogen Bioinformatics, on a topic where global collaboration is particularly important, in a highly stimulating environment. This is a research infrastructure leadership position. Apply or spread the word! apply.refline.ch/499599/0346/...

(1/9) Join us in Bern, Switzerland (8–11 Feb 2026) for our EMBO Workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies! Organized with Tanja Schwander, Laura Ross (@laurarossevo.bsky.social) and Axel Imhof. meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel... #EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

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...

Spookiest decoration at the "Zoo Goes Boo" event at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids? Giant model of parasitoid wasps hatching from cocoons affixed to their caterpillar host.

I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉 @karalmckinley.bsky.social We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice. We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

🐜🥛 Des scientifiques ont « ressuscité » une ancienne recette des Balkans et de Turquie : le yaourt aux fourmis ! Leur étude, publiée dans la revue iScience, révèle que les #fourmis rousses (Formica spp.) possèdent un ensemble de ferments permettant de transformer le lait en yaourt 😆

#Wolbachia has puzzled scientists with its power to rewire insect reproduction. What if I tell you that we found one of the keys Wolbachia use to rewire its host AND a small molecule inhibitor uses this key to mimic what this microbe has mastered for millions of years. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Super cool work on the evolution of NOD-like receptor genes in fungi 🍄‍🟫 🤩 by @loreament.bsky.social

@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.

Assistant/Associate Professor in Structural Biology, Biophysics or Biological Imaging www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/open-positio... #biozentrum #University #Basel #Professor #Structural #Biology #Biophysics #Biological #Imaging

Our department of Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Lausanne @unil.bsky.social is recruiting a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the field of Plant-Organism Interactions 🌱🐛🦠🍄! Application before November 30, 2025. See the official job ad for more details: tinyurl.com/mtxdcz6p

🚀 Looking for a Bioinformatician / Data Scientist to join our crew and explore regeneration through single-cell genomics & evolutionary biology! @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social 📩 Questions? Contact us ✉️ 🔗 Apply here: www.mpg.de/25243280/bio...

"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...

We have several open positions in my group, funded from the ERC Grant on the Early Sequestered Germline of Fungi. We search broadly for applicants at both PhD and master-level, with a dedicated interest in fungal evolutionary biology. Please forward and RT! Find the positions here: su.varbi.com

🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵 Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open. doi.org/10.1101/2024...

Feeling mitochondrially challenged lately? Here are two classic reviews on #mitochondria that should help. www.cell.com/current-biol... www.cell.com/current-biol...

If you’re interested in ants, olfaction, gene regulation, or all of the above, here’s a new preprint from the lab for you. It describes an unorthodox mechanism of transcriptional interference by which ant olfactory sensory neurons produce a single functional receptor. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Wonderful (and humble) essay on mentorship by Brandon Gaut, on occasion of Brandon receiving the inaugural Mentorship Award of @genetics-gsa.bsky.social. I hope this will be widely read! academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

It's a bumper-wasp year: here are my top tips on how to dine alongside wasps, without getting stung. GET INVOLVED! Tell us what wasps want at YOUR picnic: www.sumnerlab.co.uk/wasp-picnic-... theconversation.com/what-to-do-w... @uclcber.bsky.social @uclnews.bsky.social @uk.theconversation.com

Excited to share our new paper in #MolEcol on sex chromosome evolution in African killifish! 🐟 A great collaboration with @alexandrsember.bsky.social . We uncovered ≥4 sex chromosome turnovers across Nothobranchius spp. using cytogenetics & genomics. 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Is there an independent role of epigenetic variation in speciation? We looked for answers in the crow hybrid zone. In brief: DNA seems to be in the driving seat. Congrats Justin! This was a long journey. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This work shows the first overview on the population genetics and demographic history of the big European firefly, **Lampyris noctiluca**. Feeling very happy this work is out :) academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

🚨 Super exited to see our paper on the inheritance and genetic basis of guppy color variation come out in @natecoevo.nature.com‬ rdcu.be/eugWV Guppy males have enormous variation in color patterns, with many combinations of ornamental spots and stripes. But where does all this variation come from?

Waterhemp has recently evolved separate M & F sexes from a monoecious ancestor. @jmkreiner.bsky.social @stepheniwright.bsky.social &co reveal surprising #chromosomal complexity associated with this transition, challenging assumptions of how separate #sexes evolve @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46sTg6u

Mesquite 4.0 released! A major update — many new features, small and large (phylogenomics, visualizations, workflow management, &c). Check out the trailer video: www.mesquiteproject.org. Come discuss in our new Google Group (groups.google.com/g/mesquite-project). @bembidion.bsky.social ‬🧪 #evolbio

#🔟 Herklotz, V., Zhang, M., Nascimento, T., et al. Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis Nature (2025) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wiring the sexes: @evolvwing.bsky.social &co use CRISPR knockouts & single-nucleus transcriptomics to decipher the regulatory logic of #SexualDimorphism in sulphur #butterflies, where males display bright UV colors thanks to specialized iridescent scales @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/445Iz7d

A dozen years ago (!) we had a big job exploring 7 ant #genomes 🐜🧬alongside some other insects (Simola et al. 2013 genome.cshlp.org/content/23/8...) ... look how far the field has come - congrats GAGA on these great comparative analyses of 163 ant 🐜🧬 genomes! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Preprint on "Improving spliced alignment by modeling splice sites with deep learning". It describes minisplice for modeling splice signals. Minimap2 and miniprot now optionally use the predicted scores to improve spliced alignment. arxiv.org/abs/2506.12986

Fungal sexual reproduction and mating-type loci CurrentBiology

Registration is open for our @sib.swiss course Biodiversity bioinformatics: from large-scale phylogenomics to gene families and functions! Orthologs, paralogs, non model animal genomes, comparison of gene expression and of function, and more! www.sib.swiss/training/cou...

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

🚨 Wanted: PhD student excited about population genomics, Natural History Collections and birds! 📍 Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany 🕒 3 Years, fully funded by the Leibniz Junior Researchgroup program Details and Application portal 👇 jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/8...

🐝Great to have this out @molbioevol.bsky.social and well done Hongfei Xu (not on BlueSky) for all the hard work