🦟 Out and on a shiny new cover of Science Advances: we use a novel approach to study malaria impact on early human groups - malaria wasn't just a threat, it shaped human habitat choice in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 74,000 years. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Eleanor Scerri@elliescerri.bsky.social · 4mo ago

1/5 Well over three years of work and I’m thrilled to see it out today in Science Advances: the cover feature no less! Using an innovative pipeline, we show that malaria shaped the spatial organization of human groups in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 74,000 years. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our work on ancient Irish goat was covered in the Irish Times. www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ...

The old Irish goat is a living link to Ireland’s Bronze Age

Study shows distinct breed has genetic links to goats that lived in Ireland 3,000 years ago

irishtimes.com

Biopathocodicology?? 🦠🧬🐑 (1/4) Check out this groundbreaking new #aDNA #pathology paper by @louis-lhote.bsky.social @gingerhowley.bsky.social and colleagues! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes. #aDNA

Evidence of sheeppox in 17th-19th century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage

Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability, and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their impacts are well documented in historical records, ve...

biorxiv.org

Our paper on imputation of ancient goat genomes is now available at GBE - congratulations to @jolijnerven.bsky.social #aDNA

Inferring Domestic Goat Demographic History Through Ancient Genome Imputation

Abstract. Goats were among the earliest managed animals, making them a natural model to explore the genetic consequences of domestication. However, a chall

academic.oup.com

Huge congratulations to Zhe and everyone involved! 😊

Evolutionary Ecology Group, Cambridge@eegcam.bsky.social · 10mo ago

#newpreprint: "Climate Shaped the Global Population Structure of Leopards and their Extinction in Europe": www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Leopards are charming big cats but there are many mysteries around them. Thread 🧵

I will be recruiting two PhDs for my ERC Project HERDPATH - let's discover out how livestock and pathogens evolved together using #aDNA. Projects will be animal or pathogen focused but will be in dialogue. Details at my quaint website below. Deadline 3rd October. kevingdaly.github.io

Our new paper shows how a multidisciplinary approach (ancient proteins + DNA) reveals the long history of dairy in Armenia! 🥛🐄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Palaeoproteomic and genetic insights into millennial-scale dairy consumption in Armenia

Dairy products are a key component of the diet in Armenia today, yet the origins of milk consumption, its historical development, and genetic adaptations related to milk digestion in the region remain...

biorxiv.org

Shameless promotion from #isba11 - I'll be hiring PhDs to start early 2026 (plus postdocs starting later), using #adna to study livestock and pathogen coevolution, particularly looking at inbreeding and immune gene evolution! Contact me at kevin[at]palaeome.org, full ad to come. Please share!

Check the package website for more information, example workflows, benchmarking and ideas on how to use tidygenclust: github.com/EvolEcolGrou...

GitHub - EvolEcolGroup/tidygenclust: R package providing a tidy interface to clustering in population genetics, building on top of `tidypopgen`

R package providing a tidy interface to clustering in population genetics, building on top of `tidypopgen` - EvolEcolGroup/tidygenclust

github.com

🚨🧬New #preprint and R package from the lab out in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social🧬🚨: 'tidygenclust' combines the functionality of ADMIXTURE, fastmixture and Clumppling into R - allowing for reproducible clustering analyses and plotting all in one place! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

tidygenclust: Clustering for Population Genetics in R

Background Population structure analysis is crucial for evolutionary research and medical genomics. Clustering methods, broadly categorized as model-based (e.g. ADMIXTURE) or non-model-based (e.g. SCO...

biorxiv.org

Turns out imputation of introgressed archaic regions in aDNA works really well — sometimes even better than for the rest of the genome. More on this (and other cool results) in our new preprint 👇 #aDNA #ArchaicIntrogression #imputation doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Archaic ancestry inference in imputed ancient human genomes

When modern humans expanded from Africa into Eurasia, they interbred with archaic hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. This groundbreaking discovery, made in part possible through the genomic...

doi.org

We are excited to announce that tidypopgen – a new package for rapid population genetic workflows in R – is now available at evolecolgroup.github.io/tidypopgen/ 🧬💻 Read more in the preprint describing its features here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #popgen #Rpackage #genetics 1/2

Tidy Population Genetics

We provide a tidy grammar of population genetics, facilitating the manipulation and analysis of data on biallelic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). `tidypopgen` scales to very large genetic data...

evolecolgroup.github.io

🚨 NEW preprint🚨 Our latest study @HPS MPI-GEA @elliescerri.bsky.social & @eegcam.bsky.social models #malaria risk over the past 74,000 years revealing its powerful role in shaping human habitat choice and dispersal since the late Pleistocene in sub-Saharan Africa 🦟🌍 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Malaria shaped human spatial organisation for the last 74 thousand years

The mechanisms driving the spatial organisation of early human societies in Africa are typically addressed through climate variables [1][1]-[3][2]. However, genetic and archaeological studies have als...

biorxiv.org

Massive congrats to the team on this amazing paper! So happy for everyone involved!!👏

Evolutionary Ecology Group, Cambridge@eegcam.bsky.social · last yr.

#newpaper now out in @nature.com! A huge expansion of the human niche in Africa ~70 kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with a unique ecological flexibility. www.nature.com/articles/s41... led by Emily Hallett, @mikleonardi.bsky.social, Andrea Manica, @elliescerri.bsky.social 1/4

Check out our new paper providing new insights into the Chalcolithic Armenia through a multiproxy approach (and more to come!) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A biomolecular perspective on mobile pastoralism and its role in wider socioeconomic connections in the Chalcolithic South Caucasus

Mobile pastoralism is widely evoked when discussing technological developments, resource procurement, trans-regional interactions, and exchange networ…

sciencedirect.com

A huge congratulations to @ceciliapad.bsky.social and @eegcam.bsky.social! 🤗👏

Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias@ceciliapad.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨NEW PAPER from the @eegcam.bsky.social!🚨I have never been as proud of something as of the work that finally we can share today: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - we show how a climatically driven Pan African meta population model explains our species genetic and morphological diversity 🧬💀

I have officially started my new scholarship. Grateful to @gerda-henkel-stiftung.de for funding and to @brad-dan.bsky.social for the support!

Apply to become part of an amazing team! 👇

Marco Capodiferro@marcocapo.bsky.social · last yr.

🎓 PhD Position Available in the Population and Evolutionary Genetics group at Trinity College Dublin ☘️ . More details👇

New insights on the domestication of sheep from @gingerhowley.bsky.social ! 🐑

Kevin Daly@gingerhowley.bsky.social · 2y ago

Thread and open access version to come- Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep | Science search.app/gtSKYHF5HqRa... #adna

Science, future and Guinness! @lindaongaro.bsky.social @anahit19.bsky.social

Delighted that our new paper on female-centred kinship in Celtic Britain is out in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you @ajhgnews.bsky.social for the opportunity to talk about our recent paper and also share my story!

American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG)@geneticssociety.bsky.social · 2y ago

@ajhgnews.bsky.social sat with @anahit19.bsky.social in the latest "Inside AJHG" to discuss her recently published paper, “Demographic history and genetic variation of the Armenian population.” ➡️ www.ashg.org/ajhg/inside-... #ASHG #GeneticsDiscoveries #HumanGenetics

#ICYM we recently took part in a cool @science.org #paper about population connectivity and #cumulativeculture in chimpanzee! Congratulations to the authors including our postdoc @ceciliapad.bsky.social! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #anthropology #popgen

Population connectivity shapes the distribution and complexity of chimpanzee cumulative culture

Although cumulative culture is a hallmark of hominin evolution, its origins can be traced back to our common ancestor with chimpanzees. Here, we investigated the evolutionary origins of chimpanzee cum...

science.org

Thank you to everyone from @eegcam.bsky.social ! Nothing would be possible without you 😊

Evolutionary Ecology Group, Cambridge@eegcam.bsky.social · 2y ago

As we just joined, here is a quick catch-up about our most recent #research! Last week @anahit19.bsky.social had her paper on the #popgen of #Armenia finally published (it took a while...)! 34 new #genomes and lots of new info on the genetic #history of the region! www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...

Hello world! We are the Evolutionary Ecology Group at the University of Cambridge (UK). We work on various organisms, from humans to invertebrates, from mammals to birds and from reptiles to fish, to study how they respond and adapt to variable environments. Find more here: eeg.zoo.cam.ac.uk

I am happy to share my latest article published on @uk.theconversation.com, written for a broad audience, where I summarise our review about the Denisovans! 🧬✨ Discover their fascinating genetics and how they shaped human history. theconversation.com/their-dna-su...

Their DNA survives in diverse populations across the world – but who were the Denisovans?

The discovery of a finger bone in a cave in Siberia some 15 years ago kicked off a race to unravel the mysteries of an entirely new group of humanoids.

theconversation.com

My first post on Bluesky is about our just-published paper! 🦋 The first whole-genome study on Armenian population, aiming to check the Balkan theory on their origins proposed by Herodotus, as well as their demographic history and genetic variation, is finally out! www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex... 1/6

Demographic history and genetic variation of the Armenian population

A whole-genome study of Armenians shows homogeneous genetic structure across the region, with a recent bottleneck explaining the distinctiveness of the Sasun population. Our findings reject the Balkan...

cell.com

It's finally out—the first whole-genome study on the Armenian population! A huge congratulations to @anahit19.bsky.social for all the hard work that led to this amazing paper. 🎉 www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex... #PopGen

Demographic history and genetic variation of the Armenian population

A whole-genome study of Armenians shows homogeneous genetic structure across the region, with a recent bottleneck explaining the distinctiveness of the Sasun population. Our findings reject the Balkan...

cell.com

Yay! Great paper! Massive congrats to @anahit19.bsky.social & the rest 🤗

Kevin Daly@gingerhowley.bsky.social · 2y ago

Armenian demographic history from @anahit19.bsky.social ! www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...