I am beyond excited to announce that the Bisson Lab has a new home!!! Starting January 2026, I will join the Biology Department at Indiana University Bloomington as Associate Professor with tenure. I am actively recruiting scientists across all levels. More in our website: bissonlab.com/join [1/4]

I've slowly been reformatting notes from my population and conservation genetics course at Montana State University into a web book—a rough draft is now live here: elinck.org/popgen_conge...

Our manuscript on the microbiome of a stingless bee hive is out! 🦠🐝 So excited! Here’s a short thread with some findings, going from the assembly of a consistent multi-kingdom microbiome to discussions on host traits that contribute to it. Please take a look and share : ) rdcu.be/eVNFJ

Grateful to share our paper on gene-specific selective sweeps in human gut microbiomes, now out in Nature! It has been a joy to work with @rwolff.bsky.social, whose insights and hard work made this possible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After end/beginning-of-year celebrations and some well-earned rest, come start the year thinking and talking microbiomes: Jan 20 8:30am NY - or - Jan 22 9:30am Tokyo! I’ll share my latest work on bee hive-level microbiome assembly, including spatial organization and cross-kingdom interactions : )

The Reck-Peterson lab at Weill Cornell Medicine is seeking a technician or staff scientist to work on Aspergillus projects. Broad background in fungal biology and techniques required. Bioinformatics skills preferred. Find out more at: reckpetersonlab.org.

⚠️New format for ASM Microbe this June in Washington, DC⚠️ Applied and Environmental Microbiology is a new scientific unit @asm.org that will emphasize sustainability goals with a focus on foundations of basic science. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD6T...

The 2026 Guarda Summer Course in Evolutionary Biology is now accepting applications. Amazing place, amazing course, amazing opportunity for early grad students. tb.ethz.ch/education/gu...

Now officially published in Current Biology 🥳🥳 @mfseidl.bsky.social @binfutrecht.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

Ecologists recognize the importance of integrating across scales, yet our models often target specific scales. Our new paper presents models of population growth that scale up to explain community-level patterns, including interactions of temperature, light & nutrients. doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes @currentbiology.bsky.social by @jromeijn.bsky.social et al from @mfseidl.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

New preprint! Do you like ocean waves? We found similar waves on bacterial colonies! We found that this collective behavior, known as rippling, is nothing but surface waves on an active nematic. @princeton.edu @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The STREAMS guidelines are online. Check them out! It’s been amazing to be part of such a collaborative group of scientists and to discuss all things microbiome. Proud to have contributed to it! rdcu.be/eSETG

New preprint from our lab! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @aiswarya.bsky.social tested the role of priority effects in shaping the honeybee gut microbiota using an elegant combinatorial experimental design. A thread🧵....

Time to start planning for ASM Microbe 2026! Among the amazing sessions announced (see link), Chris and I are thrilled to be convening “From the Rhizosphere to Pollinators: Studying Agricultural Microbiomes Across Biological Scales”. We can’t wait to see you all there! More details coming soon!

Our work is out in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social! Aranzazu nicely summarized it below. #infection #symbiosky #immunity #AcademicSky #insect #symbiosis #Drosophila

New study shows bee bread has a stable core microbiota 🐝🧬 Miticides had only weak effects, with slight drops in non-core diversity. Honey bee nutrition is more microbially resilient than we thought. 💛 peerj.com/articles/203...

Our session on symbiosis and biointeractions for the #Astrobiology meeting #AbSciCon26 was accepted! Please share widely and submit your abstract by 14 of January 2026; Let's put more biology into Astrobiology! agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon...

🚨NEW paper: Benchmarking Hi-C for virus–host inference journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... A clear baseline for anyone mapping virus–host interactions that establishes robust, benchmarked thresholds for Hi-C linkages. Key results: 👇

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share our new review article on Viral Dark Matter led by PhD student @kosmopoulos.bsky.social. We talk about what is known and unknown in the world of viruses (specifically phage), and highlight future opportunities for research and biotechnology. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Hey folks, we (the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University) are looking for an Assistant Teaching Professor in microbiology and immunology. Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested, or check it out if you are interested yourself! apply.interfolio.com/176994

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

In mice yes: this type of “one-sided” selection experiment has been done in plants (with positive outcomes) and was tried in flies (no effect). So this is the second time it’s been tried in an animal and first time in a mammal @suzukilab.bsky.social 🦠🧫

The Lariviere lab at UMiami is recruiting PhD students! Incoming students will join us in studying host-microbe interactions in the honey bee gut, using molecular and genetic approaches. Please see the attached flyer for more details. #Symbiosis #SymbioSky #MicroSky #PhDOpportunity #AcademicJobs

Fungi coat the eggs of stinkbugs, creating a shield that protects the embryos from parasitic wasps, researchers report. Learn more: https://scim.ag/43kl3np

🚨vConTACT3 preprint live!🚨(Peer Review soon...!) vConTACT3 delivers a unified, scalable, and transparent framework for genome-based virus taxonomy — helping translate big viral data into systematic classification. 🔗 Read the preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... Improvements details below 👇

🚨New preprint out! We present a foundational genomic resource of human gut microbiome viruses. It delivers high-quality, deeply curated data spanning taxonomy, predicted hosts, structures, and functions, providing a reference for gut virome research. (1/8) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Enjoying Portland’s fall moss before #EntSoc2025! Join me Sunday (8–8:20 AM, Room B114) for my talk on how space and species shape stingless bee colony microbiomes — part of the symposium 'Inside and Out: Roles of Environmental and Gut Symbioses' with lots of great talks!

Preprint: Bacteria sense virus-induced genome degradation via methylated mononucleotides tinyurl.com/ch3damp We show how molecular byproducts released during virus-induced cell exploitation are used as signals to trigger host immunity Revealed by the amazing Ilya Osterman. See his thread below👇

🧬 🦠 🏙️ Urban vs rural lifestyles create dramatically different gut microbiomes. But how do these different gut microbiomes affect the host? Excited to share our new paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hi everyone, a few years ago, we started a list of labs studying bacterial immunty for students, editors, conference organizers... (currently n=79). Update time ! Send me a message to 1) add your lab or others 2) Correct info docs.google.com/spreadsheets... #Phagesky #Microsky

#EntSoc25 Tuesday Nov 11 at 8am in Portland Ballroom 256 Meet our Curator Panelists Jhon Neita 🇨🇴, Patricia Estrada 🇨🇱, Adilson Pinedo Escatel 🇲🇽, Javier Muzon 🇦🇷,Mauricio Herrera Madrid 🇪🇨, Gyanpriya Maharaj 🇬🇾, Kelli Ramos 🇧🇷

Had to draw a cartoon for this fascinating finding! Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #SymbioSky

Now online! Bacterial tubular networks channel carbohydrates in insect endosymbiosis

I cannot believe our work is finally out there and in @journal-evo.bsky.social ! This was an enormous group effort! We provide an updated estimate of the number of buzz pollinated angiosperm species, genera, and families, look at consequences for diversification, number of transitions, and more!

Our latest Research Briefing is out, on using metaproteomics and stable isotope labelling to uncover rare species involved in carbon turnover www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to share the latest work from our lab, which was published today in Nature! nature.com/articles/s41... PhD graduate and now post-doc Sofia Dahlman, along with co-senior author Sam Forster from The Hudson and other researchers from our lab and others.

Phages evolve fast, or do they? In oysters, some stay identical for years. With >1,200 phages & 600 Vibrio genomes, we reveal long-term stability and new mobile elements. Proud of this collaborative work across our teams (Roscoff-UdeM and @epcrocha.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Pretty excited to share our new preprint! Non-photosynthetic Plastid Replacement by a Primary Plastid in the Making www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nominations are now open for the Dobzhansky Prize, which recognizes the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding early-career evolutionary biologist. The award includes $5000 and an award talk at the in-person Evolution meeting. Deadline: December 1 shorturl.at/p70wY

Age-related microbiome metabolites modulate splicing and chromatin accessibility in the brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.03.680371v1

Historically, viruses were thought to primarily use host cell's translational machinery. New work from @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty Amy Lee reveals that a giant DNA virus encodes its own IF4F initiation complex, suggesting an unexpected evolutionary innovation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New pre-print: Eco-evolutionary responses of phage to different thermal regimes. Great work led by Sam Greenrod and fun collaboration with Kayla King's lab. 1/2 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to be co-organizing an #AbSciCon2026 session on Symbiosis. We welcome everything from mobilomes and viruses to organelle evolution and ecological networks! Let's bring more bio to astrobio! Submit here: agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon... #astrobiology #symbiosis

New article on equitable reuse of public sequencing data, published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! Led by the Data reuse core team @lhug.bsky.social @environmicrobio.bsky.social Cristina Moraru, @geomicrosoares.bsky.social, @folker.bsky.social and with Anke Heyer and The Data Reuse Consotrium!

A call for caution in the biological interpretation of viral auxiliary metabolic genes www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

When harmful fungi invade their carefully cultivated crops, fungus-farming termites fight back with the precision of skilled gardeners, a new Science study reveals, smothering them in soil clumps enriched with microbial allies that inhibit fungal growth. https://scim.ag/4nsAqCu

6 Scientists. 1 Panel. Big ideas. From Gut microbiomes 🧬 to Halophiles 🧂 to Plant Holobionts 🌱 Join our #UnityInDiversity panel to explore how diversity fuels discovery in microbial ecology! 🗓 Oct 21 | 8AM PT · 5PM CET · 11PM Beijing 🔗 Join us: isme-microbes.org/invitation-t...

Very happy to see our new study on the evolution of eusociality come out in Evolution Letters! Our study is the first to experimentally manipulate the proportion of females that stay and help to simulate incipient sociality & assess fitness impact of helping. 🧵