The best thing about driving through small towns is lots of opportunities for the "two-finger wave."

Evolution's not a tidy family tree. New work from @davetoews.bsky.social in @plosbiology.org found warblers sharing genes for yellow plumage across species lines for millions of yrs. But some, like this Prothonotary Warbler, took their own path to gold. Durham, NC. #PROW #genomics #ornithology

I'm missing 12 orders of the 45 in the eBird/Clement's taxonomy, according to the new BotW phylogeny viewer. Time to go to Africa.

Unbelievably helpful.

Super black plumage was identified in birds as part of awesome work by Drs. Dakota McCoy (@reallymccoy.bsky.social), Rick Prum, and others. Dr. Roberta Canton dug into one clade containing a taxon having super black plumage, _Lepidothrix_ manakins, to show that super black is relatively common...

My read of the proposed House budget is that NSF basically maintains its previous funding level, rather than the massive cuts requested by the White House. Same with USGS. punchbowl.news/wp-content/u...

Pleasantly surprised to discover last week's episode of the ABA podcast discussed our recent warbler hybrid work. Give it a listen! doi.org/10.1080/1559...

Smartphone ownership among 12-year-olds is associated with depression, obesity, and loss of sleep. No smartphones for kids! doi.org/10.1542/peds...

Latest articles from the WJO - Genetic confirmation of an “uncommon mourningthroat” (Geothlypis philadelphia  ×  G. trichas): A rare but persistent hybrid warbler. #ornithology doi.org/10.1080/1559...

Achieved my career goal of getting a writeup from the Avian Hybrids blog. This one is on the manakin paper I co-led with H.C. Lim last year which comprised a good chunk of my PhD work.

Magnolia, yellow, blackburnian, redstart, prairie, vitelline, and Wilson's warbler interbred (order unknown) to pass around the Leiothlypis (orange-crowned, Nashville, etc) form of BCO2, a gene that encodes a carotenoid-cleaving enzyme. Gene flow was probably instrumental in making warblers colorful

Note, we didn't end up getting -every- species. Most that we missed were recent splits. But also, sorry, Leucopeza fans.

New paper out. If you like colorful birds, hybridization, and phylogenetics, read on! 🧵https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003501

BIG day for warbler genomes, with work led by @kevinfpbennett.bsky.social! Whole genomes nearly *every species* of warbler. Warblers the most "Pokémon" of the bird world? Well, they're also trading their coloration genes like valuable collectors cards ... www.psu.edu/news/eberly-... 🦉🧪

Looking at long-read data is so calming compared to short reads.

Check out our short warbler hybrid paper out today, including a new unofficial common name. Carotenoid people will find some little tidbits of discussion about how these hybrids can help us understand regulation of yellow feathers.

Super excited to release this virtual field / lab experience called "VRmivora": davetoews.com/vrmivora/ It's free to download via SideQuest for a Meta VR headset: sidequestvr.com/app/44760/vr... Thanks to all involved, especially the Center for Immersive Experiences: immersive.psu.edu 🦉🧪

1/9 New in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8005 How does genetic architecture constrain evolutionary trajectories? To address this question, we inferred the genetic architecture of convergent plumage coloration and its evolutionary history in wheatears.

For decades, human genome editing has been limited to small, localized modifications. Today, in a new paper published in @science.org , researchers from Arc's Hsu lab show that bridge recombinase technology is capable of large-scale genomic rearrangements in human cells.

🐦🔬 Recruiting PhD students! 🌎🧬 I’m looking for 1–2 PhD students to join our team starting Fall 2026 at the Sam Noble Museum & University of Oklahoma. Our research: 🐦 birds • 🌍 biogeography • 🌴 Neotropics • 🧬 population genomics • 🌱 speciation 👉 Learn more: www.moncriefflab.org Please share!

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good review / synthesis of the evolution of DNA sequencing technologies over the last 40-50 years? Looking for something to read as a lab group with folks who are newer to the field. TIA

Saw this and thought to myself "Oh no we got scooped!" Nope. This is the preprint of our manuscript. Fun collab with Laura Céspedes Arias.

#AOS2025 don't miss @kevinfpbennett.bsky.social's talk at 11:15am on Wednesday in the Genomics 2 session (Ballroom C). We're cooking up some cool stuff with @mbtoomey.bsky.social on warbler carotenoid processing enzymes! 🦉🧪

This looks like an amazing tool www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Yes our learning management system is ClassWorks, but to manage your roster you have to go to Socrates. But students register through Einstein+. And to enter grades you have to go to Gradify. Except if the student is graduating, then you have to use Gradly. Oh and classrooms are managed through Bluo

New paper published! How does a mid-size river impact gene flow and population structure, including when there is an adaptive sexual trait present on one bank but not the other? With Peri Bolton, Robb Brumfield (@limpkin.bsky.social), Jerry Wilkinson, and Mike Braun. doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration across Lepidoptera https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661542v1

Nothing pairs better with red wine and lamb than getting tenure. Thanks @psubiodept.bsky.social (and all the colleagues, mentors and mentees along the way)!

For the past 10 yrs I have trained students and collected mark-recap data from non-breeding birds at #konza. Today we pulled up stakes… removed as much evidence this ever happened as possible. Bittersweet. Nature gave me this gift.

Timeline cleanse raccoon.

!!

Sketch, capture and layout phylogenies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/husonlab/phy...

Not really my announcement to make--I am but a lesser co-author--but IQ-TREE 3 has just been released! (Most credit to Minh Bui and @roblanfear.bsky.social and their labs) ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Interesting…

(getting my most bogus, indefensible claim out of the way) arguably,

Awesome study. Looking forward to digging in.

Our work (by Drew DeHaas) on an extremely simple yet efficient binary genotype format - designed to facilitate scalable bioinformatics tool development. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

not my indifferent ass concluding with a call for further study

(in a whisper) bcftools

The administration is flailing around, trying to scare government employees into taking a legally dubious "buyout." And if they go through with it, they end American dominance in science.

Important thread for people understandably upset about the situation at NSF. Don't be too quick to assume bad motives. Open defiance could get everyone fired, and courts are likely to step in soon.

Trop Bio lab alumnus, Dr. Diego Ocampo, published the final chapter of his amazing dissertation on hybridization in #birds of #Neotropics. Through field experiments, we find that plumage traits distinct between populations are not used in species recognition. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

FYI - this page will be updated regularly new.nsf.gov/executive-or...

I don't work for NSF anymore, so take this with a huge grain of salt. It's just my wild speculation. But perhaps it's useful to someone. I'd bet that some of these solicitations will return. PRFBs - my guess is they'll be back, but w/o a track for Broadening Participation. bsky.app/profile/mdca...

Casual Neanderthal introgression bomb dropped on New Year's.

"We collected an enormous amount of data and ran one huge regression. Taken together, our results suggest..."

I am stoked to read this paper. I worked as a field tech on this study system after undergrad. I got to go up the Rio Changuinola before it was dammed. It was an awesome experience. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

One year on, we’ve heard little reaction to our paper conceiving #species as process-bound, historical, and without natural rank. Integrative #taxonomy and #phylogenetics should love the concept; #speciation biology might not, but it could. #evolbio #philbio #philsci #hpbio

Parents to toddlers all have goofy Spotify Wrappeds.

"A key goal in science is understanding the evolution of life. However, the origins of benthic zooplankton reproductive anatomy has been understudied. In this paper, we..."