In the midst of the darkness, I am pleased to announce that UCLA will be hosting the upcoming Southern California Evolutionary Genetics (SCalE) conference on November 1! Registration & abstract submission is here: www.scalemeeting.org/home Deadline is October 13! Hope to see you at UCLA!

New manuscript out today in @ecol-evol.bsky.social, led by my grad student Anais. We collated data from thousands of recent animal pop-gen studies to test 3 simple hypotheses: does genomic (1) diversity decrease (yes), (2) differentiation increase (yes), both with increased IUCN-endangerment?

Save the date! #PEQG26 June 9-12 2026 in Asilomar, CA. Happens only every 2yrs, but is my favorite conference. Full website coming soon, and registration and abstract submission opens November 14, but I'm allowed to tease that keynotes will be @jnovembre.bsky.social @jennytung.bsky.social and me!

Excited to share our new paper on genetic rescue in the Pacific pocket mouse! To conserve this endangered species, we sought to understand whether small populations at risk of outbreeding depression are better managed in isolation or with gene flow. @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The Sudmant lab at UC Berkeley is seeking a postdoc to work on a fully funded NIH project to understand differences in DNA repair and somatic mutation across the primate tree of life. Please spread widely to those who may be interested aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05052

SLiM 5: Eco-evolutionary simulations across multiple chromosomes and full genomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.07.669155v1

Our manuscript describing the first Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament is now on bioRxiv! Enjoy reading about the 2024 competition as you prepare your entries for the 2025 competition! ghi.st

Absolute insanity

I am thrilled to share this paper outlining some ideas I’ve been thinking about for a little while on a simple but powerful approach for predicting risk of inbreeding depression from long runs of homozygosity and non-ROH heterozygosity. 1/n @klohmueller.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

*ALERT! GLOBAL GENETIC DIVERSITY TREND RE-ANALYSIS* "Signals of consistent genetic diversity decline are not yet measurable in global meta-analysis" doi.org/10.1101/2025...

I am thrilled to share this paper outlining some ideas I’ve been thinking about for a little while on a simple but powerful approach for predicting risk of inbreeding depression from long runs of homozygosity and non-ROH heterozygosity. 1/n @klohmueller.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

Check out our new special feature: Monitoring and Restoring Gene Flow in the Increasingly Fragmented Ecosystems of the Anthropocene www.pnas.org/topic/574 #biodiversity #evolution #ecology #popgen #ClimateEmergency

Thanks to @evoisland.bsky.social for this nice Dispatch on our honeycreeper genomics paper: www.cell.com/current-biol...

My latest for @science.org looks into Colossal's claim that the plan to "resurrect" moa is "completely a Māori initiative" with Ngāi Tahu research centre, Te Tira Whakamātaki @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

Some nice press coverage of our efforts to assemble the genome of the critically endangered palila with Hawaiian high school students and teachers: www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/07/01/t...

Another day testing the limits of resilience. The Alexandria NSF building was designed for the NSF merit review process (gold standard), complete with a floor devoted to panels. Now we aren’t allowed to have in person panels. The loss of US science leadership will haunt this country for decades.

Climate change is expanding mosquito habitat in Hawaiʻi, threatening endangered birds with avian malaria. So Hawaiʻi is releasing male mosquitoes with a strain of Wolbachia bacteria that make them incompatible with the females so their eggs don’t hatch. 🪶🧪

Ferrari @jazlynmooney.bsky.social et al. find that while parameter scaling improves efficiency, strong scaling distorts diversity, intensifies background selection, and alters linkage patterns. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf097 #genome #evolution #bioinformatics

Very excited to share the first paper from my postdoc at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance on the population genomics of recovery and extinction Hawaiian honeycreepers: Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... Press release: sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/PR/hawaiian-... ‪@currentbiology.bsky.social‬

Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years: Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... All data available: www.grene-net.org/data #MOILAB @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @hhmi.org 🧵👇

Very excited to share the first paper from my postdoc at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance on the population genomics of recovery and extinction Hawaiian honeycreepers: Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... Press release: sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/PR/hawaiian-... ‪@currentbiology.bsky.social‬

Awesome paper. Simple post-hoc trick (averaging over homologs) with elegant evolution theory dramatically improves zero shot coding variant effect prediction in pLMs & actually delivers better results from the larger models (inverting the trend with raw likelihoods). 1/

NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research. NSF Astronomy was cut by 53% Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79% Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO. #GiftLink ⚛️🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

How I imagine @klohmueller.bsky.social's lab this week posting to biorxiv

The distribution of fitness effects varies phylogenetically across animals https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.13.653358v1

The PopSim Consortium wants you! Please join us on zoom on May 27 at noon Eastern Time (1600 UTC) to tell us you would like to see in the next version of stdpopsim! DM me for meeting link, or just sign up for our email list: lists.uoregon.edu/mailman/list... (1/3)

Racist and sexist roots in the cancellation of NSF grants under Trump: Grants with female PIs canceled 2x more than men Grants with Black PIs canceled 4x over White PIs Grants with Hispanic PIs canceled 2x over White PIs Grants with PIs with disabilities canceled 2x more than without

I'm hiring! Postdoc available in my lab in Ecological Genomics. northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/... I will start reviewing applications mid-July. 🧪🧑‍🔬🖥️🧬🦑. Please share widely, thanks!

Super excited to share my latest preprint with @klohmueller.bsky.social! Here we leverage the unique signature that recessive deleterious variants can lead to an increase in archaic ancestry to tackle a classic question - the dominance distribution on the human genome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

wrote about fake dire wolves and the real endangered species act for @highcountrynews.org: www.hcn.org/articles/de-...

Upset about federal funding cuts in the US? Want some ideas of what to do? I wrote a long-ish blog post about it here ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com summarizing things I learned meeting with Senate & House aides this week with the @aibsbiology.bsky.social Congressional Visits Day event.

Great to see our latest paper on Ngorongoro Crater lion genomics out @commsbio.bsky.social Even after a rapid post-epizootic recovery in the 1970s, habitat fragmentation and continued isolation led to an increase in genetic load and to a reduction in overall genetic variation.

🚨 New preprint! We analyzed 39 bird genomes—including 3 Mauritian species that bounced back from the brink of extinction—to explore genomic erosion in a comparative framework. 🧬🦜🧩 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #consgen #popgen @claudiafontsere.bsky.social

This is CHILLING, the secretary of the Interior is saying we don't need to worry about extinction anymore! Just call Colossal! They made dire wolves so they can take care of the wolf, or bear or whatever! Go get your trophies, we can clone more! www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

So I guess Jurassic Park in real life would be billions in VC investment and years of press releases followed by a tank containing five deformed iguanas

Actual quote about the "dire wolves". “You can use the phylogenetic species concept to determine what you’re going to call a species… We are using the morphological species concept and saying, if they look like this animal, then they are the animal.” www.newscientist.com/article/2475...

Yet another example of the ‘Colossal’ waste of money spent on this de-extinction nonsense, money that is WAY better spent on conserving and saving extant species. Not to mention the blatant misuse and disregard for the ethics of gene editing 🤦🏾‍♂️

This is cool, but 20 edits in 14 genes won't turn a grey wolf into a dire wolf. The species diverged >5 million years ago and have orders of magnitude more genetic differences than that (most have negligible effect, but we don't know which ones). These are still grey wolves. time.com/7274542/colo...

I have learned that the directors of ALL: PREP, IMSD, and IRACDA programs across the country have received similar cancelation notices. This follows previous cancellations of MARC and URISE programs. This further dismantles the mechanisms that enable scientific training opportunities for SO MANY.

"This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history." Story on the decimation of NIH by @maxkozlov.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...?

"President Trump’s tariffs could drive up prices. His efforts to reduce the federal work force could increase unemployment. But ask economists which of the administration’s policies they are most concerned about and many point to cuts to federal support for scientific research." 🧪

We are excited to share our new preprint describing the inclusion of selection models to stdpopsim, our community-maintained library with an extensive catalog of population genetic models. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The orange-bellied parrot is predicted to go extinct by 2038. We tracked >200 years of genomic erosion. Here’s what we found 🧬🦜 #ConservationGenomics #consgen #popgen onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... pic by Marc Gardner

Thinking about boosting wild Addax populations w/ individuals from ex-situ groups? That’s called genetic rescue! Simulations by @ckyriazis.bsky.social show that choosing individuals from smaller source populations may reduce extinction risk more effectively. #2025MMM #RIP doi.org/10.1002/evl3...

Why do so many feel like they've fallen behind? It's not because of immigrants, trans people, the “deep state,” or any other bogeyman trotted out by the GOP.  It's because big corporations and billionaires have rigged markets and siphoned off most of the economy's gains.

Last call—hiring for my lab moving to UCLA!

Happy International Day of Women in Science. The National Science Foundation’s list of flagged words includes both “Women” and “Female.”

Not an entirely surprising result but impressive to see empirically: “most GEA candidates did not exhibit GxE”

Postdoc jobs in the Gaut lab! Brandon isn't on here, so I can be frank: he is fantastic. I did my postdoc with him and he is not only an amazing scientist but one of my favorite humans. I would have happily stayed in his lab forever if that was feasible. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF08999 #plantscijobs