Merrill lab Christmas party outing :) (Traditional fondue delayed until next year)

Very happy to see our opinion article out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social today. 🥳 We ask whether sexual signals can influence the evolutionary trajectory of naturally selected adaptations, such as protective colouration, for better or for worse 🧐 1/n doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

I am so excited to share new work on a TE insertion that regulates iridescence in swordtails, led by fantastic grad student @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and with help from many coauthors! In a time that has been so difficult to navigate, this & other projects have kept my spirits up: shorturl.at/NE65A

Join us! 🧬🪰🎉🔬 We are currently advertising two #PhD projects to study the #evolution, #development and #genomics of sexual traits in stalk-eyed flies. Deadline for applying is Wednesday, January 7, 2026. Get in touch for more info!

Two rainforest butterflies have evolved to look more alike, likely to confuse shared predators. But why don’t they get confused themselves? To avoid mating with the wrong species, they’ve cleverly evolved distinct scents. buff.ly/fxVrlCI

link.springer.com/article/10.1... @ebablab.bsky.social and I helped a bit in this really informative article by Robin Grob in the el Jundi lab on spatial orientation strategies in Lepidoptera. Have a read :-)

Our new @science.org paper is out! Cuckoos and hosts are locked in a coevolutionary arms race over egg mimicry. But how are these egg types inherited, and could this drive speciation? We sequenced hundreds of genomes to find out! doi.org/10.1126/scie... 🧵1/6

Gotta love Private Eye. Always cuts through the crap.

Really like this paper, led by @ficusorganensis.bsky.social, the supplementary videos aren’t up yet but will post them when I’m back in the office!

Nice paper showing a major effect of wing morphology on diptera flight by Camille Le Roy, Florian Muijres and collegues! doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

🚨🚨Job! 🚨🚨Permanent (75% time) job! We are a pretty awesome research group & seek a manager who deals with everything: personnel tasks, organizing retreats, preparing code for teaching / data structures for research... Fluency in German & English essential. stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/51527

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 final version of our paper on how ants and possibly other insects use a crazy mechanism involving extensive transcriptional interference to regulate odorant receptor expression is now open access in my favorite journal, @currentbiology.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Come be my colleague! Tenured Associate Professor position opening in Plant Ecology at my department @stockholm-uni.bsky.social www.su.se/department-o...

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research. If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Excited to see our most recent MS finally out in the world. We used F1 female hybrids (of two behaviourally-isolated cricket species) to show that broad gene expression divergence in the brain underpins context-dependent divergence of female response to male sexual signals.

On my (slow journey) back to Munich from an awesome visit to Stockholm uni. Thanks @rawwiberg.bsky.social and others for the invite!

2 job adverts on a NERC project w myself + @darrenobbard.bsky.social on “What determines the virome: ecology and the environment, evolution, or species history?” early 2026 in @uniexecec.bsky.social - Postdoc: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr... - RA: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr... Pls share!

Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

first road trip in our van has been a mixed bag …

I'm looking for PhD students to join the lab starting August 2026. We study the evolution of insect chemical signals so if you're interested in evolutionary biology, chemical ecology, molecular biology, behavior, or genetics, this could be a good fit for you! More info here: tinyurl.com/mrxchwfm

José Borrero from Richard Merrill's lab studies how the visual acuity changes with age in different species of Heliconius butterflies and how it is related to brain morphology and neurogenesis. #dzg2025 @borreroja.bsky.social @dickmerrill.bsky.social

Looking for a PhD? I am advertising two industry sponsored PhD projects. One on black soldier fly genetics with #betabugs and another on searching insect biodiversity for novel enzymes #Syngenta. Get in touch if you are interested!! bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/available-ic...

A little late, but I still want to share the good news 🎊: I recently started my #MSCA postdoctoral fellowship. I will assess the impact of climate change on wood ants🐜 & their hybrids 🧬. My project is based at the Uni #Amsterdam with Jonna Kulmuni & @dickmerrill.bsky.social @lmumuenchen.bsky.social

🧪 #source request: Are you a PhD student from Singapore, Japan, Korea, Australia, South Africa, Germany, or China who *recently graduated or will soon graduate?* If so, I'd like to hear about your next steps for a story in @nature.com. Send me a DM, email me, or find me on Signal (aheidt.16).

Excited to soon start my new role as Academy of Finland Research Fellow 🦋🐛I’ll later be advertising a PhD position on tiger moth colour and genomics, and will be speaking at #ESEB2025 this week if you want an idea of what’s going on!

New PhD position: Butterfly Conservation Genomics 🦋 The project focuses on threatened butterflies in Czech dry grasslands and steppes. Deadline: September 12, 2025 More info: pavelmatos.wordpress.com/join-us/

Very happy to have arrived in Uppsala for the MEME summer school after a very enjoyable (albeit very wet) week in Lapland

Seeing the world through the lens of oscillations - we are delighted to share our new paper where we demonstrate that anatomically resolved oscillatory bursts reveal dynamic motifs of thalamocortical activity during naturalistic stimulus viewing (doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...).

Female neoteny does have an impact on colonization patterns in the big European firefly, Lampyris noctiluca ✨

New from @gadusmo.bsky.social’s PhD thesis 👐🏼 with @dickmerrill.bsky.social, Jake Morris, Camilo Salazar and Carolina Pardo-Díaz ‘Repeated evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude #Heliconius butterflies’ 1/n 🧪 academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Some personal news, to be filed under “things I did not see coming”…. 1/n

🧪Why does warning signal variability persist in #aposematic species? Our new @sse-evolution.bsky.social paper explores this using data from 64,741 🤯 A.plantaginis, raised over 25 generations. Spoiler: no evidence that life-history traits constrain warning colours! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Just over a week left to apply for this. Please get the word out there and tell your students :)

Available PhD position in out Department in Zurich, on the ecology of predator-prey interactions 👇

In a past life, I worked on this population of sociable weavers (though with a different team). One of the most formative experiences of my life. Highly recommended.

Really happy to share our new preprint on the central complex of Heliconiini butterflies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Check it out! @neuroethology.org @brainevolutionnews.bsky.social @prelights.bsky.social @tibbe-evolneuro.bsky.social #brainevolution #heliconius #centralcomplex

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

Not just butterfly food :)

Really excited that our DFG grant on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size variation in *Heliconius* has been funded :) In the next weeks, I will post an advert for a PhD, but if you know of good students, please suggest they get in touch. Please repost.

🚨📢 If you study insect behavior and plant volatiles, contribute to our special collection in Environmental Entomology, "Plant Volatiles in Insect Pest Management and Sustainable Agriculture" !! Due Aug 15; DM/email for details & please share!! @entsocamerica.bsky.social @oliviabernauer.bsky.social

ISBE26-the 20th International Society for Behavioral Ecology Conference will take place in Turin, Italy, from 20-24th of July 2026. We invite you to join us to enjoy a 5-day meeting rich in top-notch science and ample networking opportunities, in our beautiful city. Website out soon! #ISBE26

🦤🧬🧑‍🔬 Junior Group Leader in Conservation Genomics Wanted! 🪲🌿🔬 Help bridge gaps between evolutionary genetics & conservation with museum and monitoring collections. 🔗 Info: tinyurl.com/biodivgen ⏰ Deadline: June 15th 📩 Contact me! 🚀 Excited to explore new horizons! Please share 🕊️

Really pleased to this first ms by PhD Student Yi Peng Toh out on BioXriv in collaboration with @ebablab.bsky.social :)

Happy to share my first major PhD work, where we show that Heliconiini caterpillars have developed more puncture resistant cuticle as a counter-adaptation against sharp Passiflora trichomes. However, we also show that the trichomes affect post ingestion, suggesting that the arms-race continues!

Just a few days left to sign up for our light pollution & insect declines workshop - FREE registration & meals - deadline for registration March 21st, and deadline for expert scan suggestions 22nd. www.visual-ecology.com/events/