Ben Hopkins

@brhopkins92.bsky.social

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Assistant Professor at University of Florida. Functional, developmental, and evolutionary genetics of organs. https://hopkins-lab.com/

What does it take to evolve a new trait? We have a new paper out that uses the Drosophila sex comb—a male-specific grasping structure found in a subset of drosophilids—as a model to answer this question 1/11

PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · last wk.

What are the genetic mechanisms for the #evolution of novel traits? This study by @brhopkins92.bsky.social &co links #Drosophila sex comb teeth to expression changes within ancestral cells, leading to diverged metabolic/developmental rates, and a novel structure. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4gQOnZK

Graphical abstract on the gain of a novel trait in Drosophila. The teeth of the recently evolved, male-specific Drosophila sex comb evolved from a more ancient organ, the mechanosensory bristle. We show that changes in the expression of genes that are shared between mechanosensory bristle and sex comb teeth cells lead to changes in a variety of fundamental cellular processes that together enable the morphological transformation.

The photo, phylogeny, general design are those of the corresponding author(s). They made the bristle schematics in biorender and the fly silhouette is their modified drawing of D. melanogaster from SciDraw (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3925939).

Davis is an amazing place for plant biology and evolution research. The EVE department is full of wonderful people who care about both research & teaching. It's a great place to build a lab and a life. bsky.app/profile/jros...

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra@jrossibarra.bsky.social · 3w ago

I am excited to announce a job for an Asst Prof in Plant Evolution in the dept. of Evolution and Ecology at @ucdavis.bsky.social. We're looking broadly, from macro (speciation, comparative genomics, evo-devo) to micro (pop biology, adaptive evolution, evo-eco). recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07777

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

Loh, L. S., DeMarr, K. A., Tsimba, M., Heryanto, C., Berrio, A., Patel, N. H., Martin, A., McMillan, W. O., Wray, G. A., Hanly, J. J. (2025). Lepidopteran scale cells derive from sensory organ precursors through a canonical lineage. Development, 152(5) journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Lepidopteran scale cells derive from sensory organ precursors through a canonical lineage

Summary: The wing scales of butterflies and moths are derived from sensory organ precursors and are homologues of mechanosensory bristles.

journals.biologists.com

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

Bild

I’m looking to hire a postdoc. We’re interested in the evolution of organs and cell types, and evolutionary and developmental genetics more broadly. Please reach out if you’re interested and please pass on to any folks that you know who might be! 🪰🧬

EvolDir@evoldir.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Postdoc position in Evolutionary and Developmental Genetics at the University of Florida's Hopkins Lab. Candidates study organ evolution with computational and experimental methods. Contact Ben Hopkins at br.hopkins@ufl.edu. More info: [Hopkins Lab](https://www.genetics.ufl.edu). #postdoc

We noticed these fruit flies are behaving like tiny big horn sheep of fly world so we went back today to see if I could get some photos of the action. Here you have it, a play in 4 acts! Make me wonder if they evolved the elongated eyes for this purpose. Zygothrica sp. Intag Refugio, Ecuador

A pair of flies smashing their heads together with front legs clasped. The have black on the abdomen, brown on the thorax, and bright red eyes, They are fighting on the top of a mushroom.The fight continues with the challengers evenly balanced. 

A pair of flies smashing their heads together with front legs clasped. The have black on the abdomen, brown on the thorax, and bright red eyes, They are fighting on the top of a mushroom.The fight continues with the fly on the right seeming to gain an upper hand and pushing the fly on the left backwards. The fly on the right is putting all his might into the battle, back legs in the air. 

A pair of flies smashing their heads together with front legs clasped. The have black on the abdomen, brown on the thorax, and bright red eyes, They are fighting on the top of a mushroom.The fly on the right emerges victorious with the fly on the left exiting toward the back of the scene. 

A pair of flies smashing their heads together with front legs clasped. The have black on the abdomen, brown on the thorax, and bright red eyes, They are fighting on the top of a mushroom.

I’m looking to hire a postdoc. We’re interested in the evolution of organs and cell types, and evolutionary and developmental genetics more broadly. Please reach out if you’re interested and please pass on to any folks that you know who might be! 🪰🧬

EvolDir@evoldir.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Postdoc position in Evolutionary and Developmental Genetics at the University of Florida's Hopkins Lab. Candidates study organ evolution with computational and experimental methods. Contact Ben Hopkins at br.hopkins@ufl.edu. More info: [Hopkins Lab](https://www.genetics.ufl.edu). #postdoc

Quick plug for our new resource, the Drosophila Species Stock Exchange. This is a database and mailing list that documents species currently in culture and the labs holding them. If you want to know more or sign up then please get in touch. See attached for more info and please share!

Bild

Looking forward to #Dros26 this week. My lab is recruiting and I would be delighted to chat with anyone interested in grad school/postdoc positions in evolutionary cell biology and developmental genetics. Please reach out if interested!

Bild

Looking forward to #Dros26 this week. My lab is recruiting and I would be delighted to chat with anyone interested in grad school/postdoc positions in evolutionary cell biology and developmental genetics. Please reach out if interested!

Bild

🚨 We're hiring! 🚨 Our lab at the University of Málaga, Spain🇪🇸 is looking for a bioinformatician researcher for a postdoc position (1+1 years). Check the ad, and if you're interested, get in touch! 📅 Starting date early 2026, with some flexibility. 🙏Please, RT!

Bild

Great to see that our mosquito cell atlas is now out in Cell. Amazing work from @oliviagoldman.net and @nadavshai.bsky.social to organise so much data and so many interesting stories into a single paper!

Olivia Goldman PhD@oliviagoldman.net · 10mo ago

Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!

Ichetucknee Springs State Park, a short drive from Gainesville, FL

I'm recruiting PhD students for the Barker Lab @uofa-eeb.bsky.social We study plant evolutionary genomics - polyploidy, hybridization & machine learning for genome evolution. Work with Selaginella, Xanthisma, Brassica & more. Funding available via CAMBIUM Fellowships. Reach out if interested! 🧬🌵🤖

The allotetraploid lycophyte Selaginella rupincola growing among the boulders at Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains southeast of Tucson, Arizona.Xanthisma spinulosum growing outside a gym in Tucson, Arizona.Selaginella arizonica X eremophila hybrid zone at Alamo Canyon in Organ Pipe National Monument.A Dieteria sp. being visited by a skipper in the White Mountains of Arizona.

The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!

Ichetucknee Springs State Park, a short drive from Gainesville, FL