How does an animal choose between exploring for a better food source and taking advantage of a known one? Our recent work in Current Biology demonstrates how recent feeding and metabolic state dynamically influence fly local search. bit.ly/3PfrIv3 #Science #Neurosky #Foraging #Drosophila

Annual reminder: if you’ve been accepted to multiple graduate programs and are still deciding, please let the ones you’re definitely not going to know as soon as possible! -Someone who got into his PhD off the waitlist the day after the deadline

Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

High-resolution single-cell analyses reveal evolutionary constraints and evolvability of sexual circuits in Drosophila | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Nature research paper: Rewiring an olfactory circuit by altering cell-surface combinatorial code go.nature.com/3MbCoZT

@rorycoleman.bsky.social and I wrote an opinion piece called 'From neurons to novelty: Circuit mechanisms shaping courtship evolution' We argue that now is a great time for neuro-evo research www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on. (Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #blueprint 1/7

1/ Hello Drosophila-philists and braino-maniacs! 👋🪰🧠🧪 The Caron lab has a new preprint, and it is about 🥁🥁🥁 democracy! Neuro-democracy, to be precise. So: drop EVERYTHING and listen up — a 🧶! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New @currentbiology.bsky.social paper from @leslievosshall.bsky.social&@leahhouri.bsky.social: FEMALE mosquitoes control mating, not males, by special genital movement. No elongation = no mating! Plus: male asian tiger mosquitoes can bypass the yellow fever mosquito female control shorturl.at/tsIWH

The first detailed look at how mosquitoes mate from @leslievosshall.bsky.social's lab reverses the assumption that male mosquitoes control the process, finding that a subtle female behavior dictates whether mating will take place or not. @currentbiology.bsky.social More here: https://bit.ly/4huwEpL

Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)! This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/

There is still “an urgent need for donations from the community,” says Eric Lai, president of the Fly Board. By @callimcflurry.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/community/fl...

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint We discovered that the fruit fly #drosophila erecta requires food odor to mate and arousal is further enhanced by social group motion. Cross-species analysis of brain activity reveals a novel gate evolved from within a conserved circuit shorturl.at/gGYm7

The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!

Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns? To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠 #preprint thread ⬇️1/8

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint: “Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Ecology and/or Evolution @columbiauniversity.bsky.social. Deadline to apply September 30. Reach out if you have questions. apply.interfolio.com/172496

New review on how changes in cell type composition in and outside the brain contribute to the evolution of behavior. 🧪 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lihM,LqAZ...

Excited to share our latest work on brain evolution, where we dive into the evolution of Cajal-Retzius cells! If you are interested in cell type evolution and cerebral cortex evo-devo, please read on… www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/7

Preprint for my PhD. Thanks to Dr. Bai for letting me merge my interests in neuroscience with lab focus on peroxisome. We discover unexpectedly cell type specific peroxisomal import in subset of glia under autonomous circadian regulations. Gratitude to Dr. John Vaughen for his support. Thread soon.

I am thrilled to announce that I just opened my lab at New York University in @nyucns.bsky.social and Biology! Our work will explore the richness of animal behavior, dissecting the genetic and circuit mechanisms that shape its evolution.

FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...

The Mount Sinai Neuroscience seminars (MSNseminars) committee is now actively accepting applications from postdocs! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇 bit.ly/44aVm9E

New preprint from lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Sexual dimorphism arises not through wholesale transcriptional reprogramming, but via selective sex-specific survival of neurons defined by birth order and shared developmental programs.

Join the #VosshallLab as a postdoctoral scientist. Fully funded, right here in New York City @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

My ongoing request: If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here. NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h... NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h... Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.

Happy to share my narrative research on young women's experiences of sexual desire has now been published! Findings highlight the strategies women use to navigate desire within inequitable social systems and relationships and embodied desire as a form of resistance @qualpsy.bsky.social

Maps are everywhere in the brain...and finally we've discovered one in the nose! Led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social, we uncovered the logic that specifies the positions of each of the 1,000 sensory neuron subtypes in the nose and aligns their projections to the brain.👇👃see more details below👃👇

Happy to see this out now: Olfactory projection neuron rewiring in the brain of an ecological specialist: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports... In a team effort with @bentonlab.bsky.social 's lab we establish new genetic tools in #drosophila sechellia and compare single central brain neurons.

New preprint from my PhD in @amphispacelab.bsky.social is out! 🥳 We investigated the evolution of my favorite gene FoxQ2 across 21 animal phyla, and found three ancient paralogs with a very dynamic history. More on phylogeny, synteny, and comparative in situs in the 🧵 below! tinyurl.com/2j96px45

✨🦟✨HOW DO MOSQUITOES HAVE SEX? ✨🦟✨ Join us for a wild journey into hidden female control, rapidly evolving stimulation devices, fierce species competition, and DEADLY MOSQUITOES! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/ H3K27me3 mimicry has repeatedly emerged through evolution, but what's the physiological relevance? We show that JARID2 and PALI1 mimic H3K27me3 to antagonise PRC2 in vivo and restrict the spread of Polycomb domains. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Sorrells Lab is hiring a recent college graduate interested in neurobiology of mosquitoes! The position is ideal for someone interested in gaining skills for graduate school. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/164849

Excited to share new work with @clienkaemper.bsky.social and @gkocker.bsky.social! 🌬️🦟

I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research. Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

I’m excited to share our publication from @dulaclab.bsky.social in @nature.com, where we illuminate the development of hypothalamic cell types involved in a broad range of functions, from social behaviors to thirst, thermoregulation, and sleep. Highlights below! 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In drosophila, by manipulating sets of surface proteins, you can re-engineer connectivity of olfactory neurons and generate a new neuron type that alters courtship behavior. Impressive work from the Luo lab. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... this looks nice. @verabiol.bsky.social congrats!

How does the brain work in natural scenarios, in multi-animal societies of wild animals? 🧠 🧪 🦇 doi.org/10.1126/scie... (1/n)

New pre-print: an one-stop shop for everything you wanted to know about the fly olfactory system: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

AT LAST OUR PEER-REVIEWED PRE-PRINT IS PUBLISHED We finally vanquished Reviewer #3 - with great support from the academic editors @ScienceAdvances Cross-modal sensory compensation increases mosquito attraction to humans | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I used VVD Viewer for this #FluorescenceFriday video: 141 volumes from the #HHMIJanelia FlyLight Split-GAL4 #Drosophila driver collection. The animation comes from a high-level description processed by neuVid. Such a rapid tour of the data has questionable scientific value, but it's fun to watch!

A central question in developmental biology is how different tissues express different subsets of the genes in the genome. This is particularly critical for "master regulators" like the Hox genes that define organ identity. One key is modifying "chromatin"--the histone proteins that bind DNA 1/n 🧪

Excited to have this paper out (rdcu.be/d0T3Y)! In it, we focused on how flies know what to attend to in a complex environment (like below)? We uncovered neuronal pathways through which social states (like aggression 🥊) modulate visual processing in #Drosophila. #WomenInSTEM #neuroscience 🧪 1/

The birth of fruit fly's central nervous system imaged with multicolor #adaptive #lightsheet microscopy. The microscope self-aligns to a signal that appears during imaging. www.nature.com/articles/nbt...

It’s a wrap! The final version of our paper is out 🎉 where we characterize the multifaceted response of the transcript-activated type III CRISPR-Cas immunity. Here’s a skytorial (bluetorial?) by my awesome co-lead @akshilton.bsky.social #RNA #RNAsky #WomenInSTEM

Sharing my new paper again since moving from the other place 🙂 We shed light on some of the most rapidly evolving animal behaviors—those surrounding mating.