📝 NEW PREPRINT It’s with an immense joy that our preprint is finally out and it’s my first first co-author paper!!! 🧬🍄 What is the diversity of 3D genome architectures in fungi? We reconstructed the 3D genome architecture of public Hi-C data from 55 fungal. Preprint: lnkd.in/enxTh2Cm

Huzzah! Today begins the Big Butterfly Count, a huge effort to collect data by @savebutterflies.bsky.social. Need help understanding why study butterflies? I interviewed @charlottewright.bsky.social co-lead of @projectpsyche.bsky.social and learned heaps. sangerinstitute.blog/2025/12/11/f...

Five questions on butterfly and moth genomics with Charlotte Wright - Wellcome Sanger Institute Blog

Drawn to genomics like a moth to a flame, Wellcome Sanger Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Charlotte Wright, shares with us how she uses genomics to shed light on the evolutionary history of butterfl...

sangerinstitute.blog

📣EUROPEAN RED LIST OF MOTHS PUBLISHED!📣 A m(amm)oth task - huge congratulations to the team! Spoiler: >3000 species assessed at the European level, 704 of them endemic. Ca. 25% are listed as Data Deficient & 11% threatened with extinction. op.europa.eu/en/publicati...

🎨 job alert 🐠 Come join us! We have two positions open! These are part of our @erc.europa.eu funded project on the mechanisms underpinning convergence of colour patterns in cichlid fishes! Closing date: 16th August. Postdoc: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... Technician: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Callipterus Cichlid Collecting Shell

ALT: Callipterus Cichlid Collecting Shell

static.klipy.com

The @smbe-idea.bsky.social symposium at #SMBE2026 was packed with inspiring talks and thought-provoking discussion. Thank you for the opportunity to share how @projectpsyche.bsky.social & @10klepgenomes.bsky.social is making biodiversity genomics more inclusive!

Project Psyche@projectpsyche.bsky.social · last mo.

(2/3) Great talk by @charlottewright.bsky.social from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social, one of our coordinators, on widening participation in genome generation! @10klepgenomes.bsky.social is scaling Lepidoptera genome curation across Europe: 30 trained curators, 14 countries, 120+ genomes curated 🦋👀

Our paper is out! 📣 we find that molecular measures of genetic variation do not predict heritable genetic variation across species - important implications for the application of genomic data for conservation! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Nucleotide diversity is a poor predictor of short-term adaptive potential | PNAS

The capacity to adapt is essential for a population to avoid extinction in a changing world and is recognized as a global conservation priority. Ad...

pnas.org

Stewart, @paulbfrandsen.bsky.social @gjijonn.bsky.social et al. demonstrate the rapid evolution of the caddisfly H-fibroin gene and the wide range of H-fibroin structural polymorphism tolerated in functional capture net silk. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag132 🖌️ Ralph Holzenthal #evobio #molbio

Busy days, we keep collecting, identifying & dissecting #butterflies and #moths for #referencegenome sequencing. No 🦋 is safe during the @10klepgenomes.bsky.social field workshop in Vlahi 🇧🇬 @projectpsyche.bsky.social @charlottewright.bsky.social @alenasuchackova.bsky.social @lepphylo.bsky.social

A labour of love. Identifying #lepidoptera species, especially micromoths, requires time & patience but we gathered the best experts from across Europe. Nothing less would do: during the @10klepgenomes.bsky.social field workshop in Vlahi 🇧🇬, we collected ~300 species! 💪💪 @projectpsyche.bsky.social

🧬🦋 New preprint out! 🦋🧬 What mechanisms underlie large-scale chromosomal rearrangements? Why do rearrangement rates vary so massively across taxa? We explored these questions in Erebia butterflies, a genus with extraordinary chromosome number diversity, from 7 to 52! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Kicking off @10klepgenomes.bsky.social field workshop in Vlahi 🇧🇬 Butterfly & moth afficinados from all over Europe start deploying their beautiful light traps to capture undersampled #biodiversityhotspots for #referencegenome sequencing. Stay tuned for more! @projectpsyche.bsky.social

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

An excellent two day @royalsociety.org meeting packed with discussion about how pangenomics is revolutionising evolutionary biology. Thank you to all the amazing speakers and attendees who contributed to the rich discussions and @henrylnorth.bsky.social & @joanameier.bsky.social for co-organising!

Very excited to be part of this important symposium later this month!

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution@official-smbe.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#SMBE2026 IDEA Symposium: Advancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Molecular Biology and Evolution 🗓️ Tue Jun 30, 3:50pm 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme

As we prepare for a 2nd get-together, the report of the 1st in-person workshop of LepEU, a consortium to study population genomics of European Lepidoptera, is just out. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Thanks to COST Action @10klepgenomes.bsky.social for funding for these workshops.

LepEU: A Consortium to Study the Population Genomics of Butterflies and Moths Across Europe

LepEU, the European Lepidopteran Population Genomics Consortium, was launched in 2023 to coordinate continental-scale collections and generate population-level genomic data for butterflies and moths ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Excited that the first genome assembly of a Lonomia spp. moth has been published @genetics-gsa.bsky.social by first authors @diler.bsky.social + @samridhi.bsky.social w/our wonderful colleagues at Universidad de los Andes led by Dr. Camila Gonzalez (thanks @cdanielcadena for introducing us!). 1

A study of South American butterflies and moths shows they reused the same genetic cheat sheet for 120 million years. 📝 Learn more about this collaborative work via the link below ⤵️ https://www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/evolution-has-reused-the-same-genes-for-120-million-years/ 📸 Arif Maulana

That's a wrap! Thank you to everyone that came and exchanged ideas and experience and for @petermulhair.bsky.social for superbly hosting this meeting. Great things happen when >50 researchers come together to plan and do analysis for a week! Exciting times for @projectpsyche.bsky.social 🦋🦋🦋

10kLepGenomes@10klepgenomes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Today we close the @projectpsyche.bsky.social spring meeting at @liverpooluni.bsky.social. Final discussions and the summary session helped define our strategy for the coming months of data analysis 🧬🦋! #10kLepGenomes #Lepidoptera #Genomics

Day 3 of the @projectpsyche.bsky.social spring meeting at @liverpooluni.bsky.social. Summary sessions brought together the ideas we’ve developed so far, followed by a visit to the entomological collection 🧬🦋 #10kLepGenomes #Lepidoptera #Genomics

Social dinner: where science meets fish and chips at Cambridge 🐟🍟🍻😀 Our stay ended- but the real takeaway? Two weeks of #HiC #genomic mapping, now safely packed into our brains 🧬 🧠☺️ … and already in use at home👩🏼‍💻🧑🏻‍💻☺️ @10klepgenomes.bsky.social

We are thrilled to announce the next ECR (and apparently butterfly)-themed session of the Integration of Speciation seminar, featuring @charlottewright.bsky.social and @thymelicus.bsky.social + careers Q&A with Dr Sally Potter. Find the link on the Ios website & mailing list.

Chromosomes are often classified as either monocentric (single centromere per chr) or holocentric (centromeric activity spread across each chr). In reality, there is a continuum in centromere organisation - and cyperids are a fascinating system to explore this in as James shows in this preprint! 🌱

James McCulloch@jamesimcc.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Why do the chromosomes of cyperids (sedges & rushes) split and fuse so regularly on evolutionary timescales? Is it because they have so many centromeres? Our new preprint, the first major paper of my PhD, addresses this question. 🧵⬇️ 1/12 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The integration of speciation seminar series is restarting, with the first session coming up on *Tuesday March 3rd @ 5pm CET*, featuring two talks by @naturalselection.bsky.social and @andreaestandia.bsky.social + career Q&A with @markravinet.bsky.social as part of the ECR in Speciation theme.

New pre-print with some updates on ivory:miR193 in a highly polymorphic moth. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We mapped ivory (again!?) this time controlling aspects of camouflage in Anticarsia gemmatalis. Mapping, SVs, Expression and Function. Comments/suggestions welcome!

Now online! In this review, we cover four major topics on butterflies and moths: their evolutionary history and diversification dynamics, genomics, global diversity patterns, and conservation 🦋🌏 (1/8) @natrevbiodiv.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Evolution, genomics and conservation of butterflies and moths - Nature Reviews Biodiversity

Butterflies and moths are key indicators of functioning and healthy ecosystems around the world. This Review describes the evolutionary history of the order Lepidoptera and tracks shifts in researcher...

nature.com

(1/3) The 2nd Genome Curation Workshop continues! Today, participants explored Merian elements and chromosome evolution in #Lepidoptera in a fantastic talk by @charlottewright.bsky.social More info below 👇🦋

The #fly community aims to achieve a comprehensive genomic study of the Drosophilidae family. @pankajd.bsky.social @bernardkim.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social @darrenobbard.bsky.social present a comparative gene annotation for 301 #Drosophilidae species @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c3pyrI

It was great to start the week off by welcoming the second cohort of budding curators to the Project Psyche Genome Curation Workshop! Over the next two weeks they will become experts in piecing together genomes and will use these skills to curate some Project Psyche genomes! 🔎🧬

10kLepGenomes@10klepgenomes.bsky.social · 6mo ago

📢 Today marks the start of the 2nd Genome Curation Workshop, organised by #10kLepGenomes and @projectpsyche.bsky.social From Feb 16–27, seventeen participants will learn how to interpret and edit Hi-C maps alongside senior curators at the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social Stay tuned for updates! 🦋🧬

🐌Justin Gerlach's blog post traces the remarkable journey of Partula conservation from the near‑total collapse of wild populations in the 1970s, following the introduction of the predatory rosy wolf snail, to successful reintroduction efforts.

Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, Cornwall shows. Read More: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-e... @uniexecec.bsky.social #ExeterEcology

Artificial nighttime lighting is suppressing moth activity

Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research shows. Moths’ attraction to artificial light, such as streetlights, is common knowledge and has been much studied...

news.exeter.ac.uk