📣 I'm recruiting PhD students to join the Akopyan Lab at Rice University! If you're passionate about evolutionary genomics, I'd love to hear from you. Details: akopyanlab.org/opportunities Please share widely! 🙏

Opportunities

We are recruiting PhD students in Evolutionary Genomics for Fall 2027 at Rice University!  Projects in the lab include investigating the causes and consequences of recombination rate variation, the...

akopyanlab.org

How & why does the distribution of fitness effects #DFE vary among species? Meixi Lin, @klohmueller.bsky.social &co analyze genetic variation from 11 animal species, finding that fitness effects are influenced by phylogeny, population size & organismal complexity @plosbiology.org 🧪 buff.ly/t5q7Mqo

Hybrid zones are increasingly common; to what extent are human impacts on the environment the cause? We used pop gen, water chemistry, GIS, and ecotoxicology to explore the causes of hybridization in swordtails. With @mollyschumer.bsky.social, now out in Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Increased rates of hybridization in swordtails are associated with water pollution

Anthropogenic disturbance can drive hybridization by altering pre-mating reproductive barriers. Moran et al. pair population genomic surveys with water chemistry and GIS data to show that human develo...

cell.com

My lab has an open staff position. It's for 1 year; could be nice for a recent grad building up their experience. But please share promptly: apps due by end of Thursday! The focus is on variation among labs' copies of common lab stocks like Canton-S & Oregon-R. jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/researc...

Research Specialist - Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:Academic StaffEmployment Type...

jobs.wisc.edu

good scientific writing alert "In the Hawaiian honeycreepers, the progression “rule” is more of a polite suggestion" from nice new paper on Hawaiian honeycreeper phylogeny www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Very cool pair of papers demonstrating little link between amount of additive genetic variation and amount of nucleotide variation within species: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species

Adaptive potential determines how populations respond to environmental change. This study compiles evolvability estimates from over 170 multicellular species, revealing substantial variation across th...

journals.plos.org

grateful to have received the lab's first NSF grant to study cyclical processes of speciation with new theory and tools (applied to Melanesian birds). ad to come, but I'll be looking for a postdoc with computational biology chops—please reach out! (and repost) www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

Come to my talk today at 4:20 if you want to hear about long ROH and Hawaiian birds 🤙 #SMBE2026

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution@official-smbe.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#SMBE2026 S05: Molecular Evolution in the Era of Genetic Diversity Decline 🗓️ Wed Jul 1, 3:50pm 🔗 cappartner-smbe2026.eventsair.site

Trump and Colossal partnering to biobank cells from endangered species? What could go wrong!

Carl Zimmer@carlzimmer.com · 3mo ago

The US government is entering a partnership to store frozen cells and other biological samples from endangered and threatened species with Colossal, a private company best known for claiming to "de-extinct" dire wolves. Story by me & @catrineinhorn.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/43Rzhfw

#SMBE2026 S05: Molecular Evolution in the Era of Genetic Diversity Decline 🗓️ Wed Jul 1, 3:50pm 🔗 cappartner-smbe2026.eventsair.site

Please circulate: I will have a postdoc opening soon, ideally with a start date sometime this summer or fall. If you're interested in empirical population genetics, computational methods development, and/or evolutionary modeling via simulation, don't hesitate to reach out. For more info on the lab:

The number of NIH competitive awards is down 50% from 2025, and down ~70% from prior years. Even if they catch up by the end of the year, only wealthy institutions can bridge these huge funding gaps.They're killing science-and violating the constitution-by weaponizing the bureaucracy

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 5mo ago

Through March 31, the number of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year, a Post analysis found. There are also fewer grants focused on women’s health, cancer and mental health, the analysis found. https://wapo.st/48dWJWX

I am hiring a popgen postdoc! Looking for a creative scientist to join us at USC to investigate recessive variation and complex traits in model or non-model species. The project is funded by a multi-year NIH grant, contract can be renewed. Job add & details 👇🏽 usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

New preprint! We sequenced 175 'Alalā (Hawaiian crow) genomes to understand why >50% of eggs fail to hatch in a species recovered from just 9 individuals. What we found was a both exciting and surprising. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Rice's whale could go extinct after Trump administration overrode the Endangered Species Act this morning to expand oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Story by @maxinejoselow.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/3NBOUDr

Seems like a cool paper but I do not recommend clicking on these hashtags

PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · 5mo ago

Female discrimination between sperm has been seen in animals, affecting reproductive outcomes, but what about large mammals? This study shows that the baboon #vagina can alter #sperm survival via vaginal immune responses & pH, depending on male genetic relatedness @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4sL2Zxl

New preprint! We sequenced 175 'Alalā (Hawaiian crow) genomes to understand why >50% of eggs fail to hatch in a species recovered from just 9 individuals. What we found was a both exciting and surprising. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am thrilled to present my latest work, which finds that bacterial genetic diversity (in the form of co-colonizing strains of the same species and the genetic variants they harbor) is uniformly distributed along the gut. Read more about it at Nature Communications! doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Nandita Garud@nanditagarud.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I am excited to share our latest paper, Uniform bacterial genetic diversity along the gut, now out in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41.... (1/n)

We are destroying species' habitats, leading to a mass extinction event. This habitat destruction also reduces the genetic diversity _within_ species. Our latest work develops quantitative models to predict how much genetic diversity has been and _will be_ lost. 🧬🧪🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Large future genetic diversity losses are predicted from conservation indicators even with habitat protection | PNAS

Genetic diversity within species underpins evolutionary adaptation and has recently been included as a target for protection in the United Nations’...

pnas.org

Special Feature in AmNat @asn-amnat.bsky.social just out on Genomic Forecasting. "Collectively, the articles underscore both the promise and the limitations of genomic forecasting while [showing] predictive performance is context dependent" 🧬🧪👨‍🔬🖥️🌲🐋🌿 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The last chapter of my PhD is finally out !!!! In the same species, on neighboring islands, we see radically different warning colors emerge. Evolution in action: Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio

Aguilar-Gómez et al. use exome sequencing of 347 strawberry poison frogs to uncover the genetic basis of color variation. They identify that kit, ttc39b, and bco1 underlie blue-red, yellow-red, and gr...

cell.com

I am seeking a postdoc to join my group at UCLA -- ideally the candidate would have some experience in either population genetics or microbes/microbiome (computational background needed). We have a range of projects and are happy to tailer to your interests. Please dm/email me if interested.

Slim 5 can now simulate genomes with multiple chromosomes like autosomes, sex chromosomes, mitochondria and chloroplast dna academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

SLiM 5: Eco-evolutionary Simulations Across Multiple Chromosomes and Full Genomes

Abstract. Evolutionary simulations of multiple chromosomes, even up to the scale of full-genome simulations, are becoming increasingly important in populat

academic.oup.com

Here's my latest contribution to the @nytimes "Lost Science" series. Brenna Henn's sweeping study of African genetics has been frozen. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Ypmm1A

New special issue in Molecular Ecology on Conservation Genomics #popGen #evolution 🧪🧬🖥️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1365294x...

Special Issue: CONSERVATION GENOMICS ‐ MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Molecular Ecology: Vol 34, No 23

Molecular Ecology is an international journal for research using molecular genetic techniques to address questions in ecology, evolution, behavior and conservation.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Happy to share my work with my advisor Zachary Szpiech! Why are associations between ROH & complex traits inconsistent across studies? We use realistic simulations to show how demographic history and genetic architecture interact to shape the phenotypic impact of ROH. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Influence of Demographic History and Genetic Architecture on Complex Traits via Runs of Homozygosity

Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are contiguous genomic regions where all sites are homozygous, inherited from identical haplotypes due to shared ancestry. The number and length of ROH in individuals varies...

biorxiv.org

The registration deadline is fast approaching for probgen 2026! Abstracts due by January 15, registration by January 31 probgen2026.github.io

Preprint online right before the holidays! Excited to share the first piece of work from the Zhang Lab, led by my absolutely stellar postdoc Michelle Kim! In this work, we ask how admixture, selection and demography shape complex trait genetics and GWAS performance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Determining the driving factors shaping genetic architecture of complex traits in recently admixed populations

Understanding the genetic architecture of complex traits in admixed populations remains challenging due to heterogeneous genetic backgrounds and demographic histories. Mischaracterizing admixture can ...

biorxiv.org

Just out in Systematic Biology, we explore the role of gene flow in island phylogeography of the Solomons Black-and-white Monarch complex. doi.org/10.1093/sysb... Up first, strong genetic structure between islands groups and weak (but present!) structure between Pleistocene-connected islands (🧵)

For population genetics and evolutionary biology folks in the Bay Area: the next BAPG will be hosted by Stanford CEHG and the Petrov lab at Stanford on 12/6. Registration is free but required. The deadline for talk submission is Nov. 16. Hope to see you soon! Pls RT! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...