New #RSOS paper: Inferring the dynamics of selective constraints across complex ontogenies: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Evolution as Active Geometry: The Geometric State Equation of the Tree of Life https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.09.710612v1

Super happy to share that my article on inferring the dynamics of selective constraints across complex ontogenies is now out in Royal Society Open Science. My experience with RSOS was great, and I’m happy to be part of the movement towards open science! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

<steps to microphone> <taps microphone> Most microbes do not coevolve with *hosts* even when found associated with hosts

Happy to share this work by myself and Charles Wang, an incredible undergraduate student I have had the pleasure of working with over the past year, is now out in G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. @genetics-gsa.bsky.social academic.oup.com/g3journal/ar...

The interaction of dispersal, species sorting, and priority effects, explains a unimodal response of β-diversity to immigration rates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.31.697192v1

Pleiotropy increases with gene age in six model multicellular eukaryotes doi.org/10.1093/evle... Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by Reese Martin and Ann T Tate

Why is phenotypic plasticity so common? Models show that even low migration between locally adapted populations can maintain costly plasticity in constant environments, revealing migration as a key driver of plastic trait evolution. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Do extra chromosome sets mask bad mutations? Simulations show tetraploids often carry higher genetic load than diploids, depending on dominance, demography, and drift—with important implications for fitness and conservation. academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Can we predict gene expression evolution? In flour beetles, transcriptome-wide selection predicts expression change, with indirect selection acting strongest on pleiotropic, network-central genes—linking co-expression architecture to adaptation. academic.oup.com/evlett/artic... Photo: Udo Schmidt

My first manuscript reviewed by @peercommunityin.bsky.social (Evolutionary Biology) is now out in @peercomjournal.bsky.social, and I could not be happier with the processes. I am proud to contribute to what I believe is the future of scientific publishing. peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....

Biophysical constraints on mRNA decay rates shape macroevolutionary divergence in steady-state abundances https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.24.690267v1

Mean fitness is maximized in small populations under stabilizing selection on highly polygenic traits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.17.688329v1

Very proud that @gauravathreya.bsky.social's brilliant work based on his Master's thesis is out as his first paper in @asn-amnat.bsky.social. Interested in host-symbiont interdependence, eukaryogenesis, evolutionary transitions in individuality, and some great theory to back it?...check out the🧵👇

New paper showing how immigration alters the ecological processes structuring the assembly and variation in #Monarch caterpillar gut #microbiomes. w/ @jaapderoode.bsky.social, @gabe-dubose.bsky.social, Joselyne Chavez, Lydia Fuller-Hall Ecology Letters onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Phylogeny-aware simulations suggest a low impact of unsampled lineages in the inference of gene flow during eukaryogenesis Excellent paper from @tonigabaldon.bsky.social and @microbiobits.bsky.social and Moisès Bernabeu. academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Quantitative system drift https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.17.676933v1

"Biologists often become alienated from mathematics at an early stage in their career under the misconception [...] that biology is not a mathematical science. The claim is also often made that mathematical theory is overly simplistic, ignoring the [...] complex nature of biological systems." 1/

Dynamics of fixation probability in a population with fluctuating size https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.26.672280v1

Super excited to share this work from an awesome collaboration between myself and Charles Wang, an incredibly bright and motivated undergraduate in the lab!

Graph Neural Networks for Likelihood-Free Inference in Diversification Models https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.14.670341v1

The evolution of reversible plasticity in stable environments doi.org/10.1093/evle... Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by Nicole Walasek et al.

Strategic citations for a fairer academic landscape https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.06.668908v1

Developmental system drift in the patterning of the arthropod tarsus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.08.663771v1

The evolution of high-order genome architecture revealed from 1,000 species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.05.663309v1

The impact of background selection in mutation-selection-drift balance models of complex trait evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.27.656342v1

Pleiotropy and facilitation of local adaptation in the silverleaf sunflower Helianthus argophyllus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.22.655459v1

Super happy to share the pre-print for this project after >5 years in the works!

When should adaptation arise from a polygenic response versus few large effect changes? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.15.654234v1

Sex decreases the pleiotropic costs of local adaptation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.28.646016v1

Why aren't more researchers publishing in society journals? Two potential reasons: 1) They're often unfamiliar to early-career researchers, and/or 2) they need better promotion, a task for all of us.

March issue: Amino acids that are more different do have lower rates of exchange over evolutionary time, and this result is general to different taxonomic groups. doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... #MolecularEvolution #AminoAcids #OpenAccess

Excited to share our new paper in Ecology Letters w @lars-brudvig.bsky.social, the culmination of more than a half decade of great fun and research from a landscape-scale experiment in tallgrass prairies! #CommunityAssembly, #PlantDiversity, #RestorationEcology, #Scale, #Prediction

Accelerated genome shuffling associated with rapid evolution of sexual conflict in seed beetles https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.24.639998v1

Evolution of developmental bias explains divergent patterns of phenotypic evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636455v1

Not sure this needs emphasis, but worried about overfitting in #data-driven models? #Theory-driven predictions based on principles offer transparent rationale. Assumptions, parameters & interconnections are easier to assess and refine - it's more about evaluating assumptions than fitting to data 🧪

Genome architecture and speciation in plants and animals. I learned a lot writing this with @dortizba.bsky.social, Silu Wang and Loren Rieseberg! doi.org/10.22541/au....

New paper is now out in @jevbio.bsky.social academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

Genetics of recombination rate variation within and between species Bret Payseur academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Genome structural variation in natural Caenorhabditis elegans populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.07.631790v1

The irony of performing science in grad school is executing the research itself isn’t the difficult part. Rather it’s the natural human flaws, opinions, politics and poor communication skills which impede our ability to do research or collaborate effectively in ways that produce effective science.

Muller's Ratchet and Gene Duplication https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.27.630357v1

I'm happy about my "Threading the Needle: Species Eliminativism Meets Biological Conservation" coming out in BJPS. In essence, Marc Ereshefsky provided some very powerful arguments for eliminating the species category from biology.

Reduced signatures of gene duplication and non-random gene organization in shaping stage-specific patterns of gene expression across a relatively simple life cycle https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.21.629888v1

Sex-allocation trade-offs and their genetic architecture revealed by experimental evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.11.627930v1

Physiology, the functioning of a cell at a given time and in a given set of physiochemical conditions, is an emergent property that cannot be reliably predicted from genomic data or metabolic reconstructions alone. #testthy(metagenomic)hypotheses

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

I am accepting applications for a PhD student to join my lab at the University of California, Riverside. If you are interested in plant community ecology, ecosystem function/stability, global change, or restoration, please contact me. Fully funded position available. See my website for more details.