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

🧫 GSEA winner Ira Zibbu @coolscootre.bsky.social tells us a bit more about her research on bacterial evolution - and why coming to conferences such as the SMBE meeting is important for young career researchers such as herself. #SMBE2026 #society

The Graduate Student Award Symposium was absolutely incredible! 🤯 The quality of the science was outstanding. I certainly don’t want to be in the judges’ shoes! #SMBE2026 🧬

Feeling very grateful for this incredible opportunity to share our work on the sparkle trait at #SMBE2026! I had a blast hearing all the graduate student talks! Huge thank you to the organizers and chair for having us.

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

The Graduate Student Excellence Symposium started the afternoon of #SMBE2026 day2 We are honoured to have welcomed eight excellent communications from Wei-Han Lin, Nadia Haghani, Ira Zibbu, Anjali Gupta, Jialin Wei, Oya Inanli, François Frejacques, and Arthur Matte! Thank you! #society

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

Insertion of an invading retrovirus regulates a novel color trait in swordtail fish

For over a century, evolutionary biologists have been motivated to understand the mechanisms through which organisms adapt to their environments. Coloration and pigmentation are remarkably variable wi...

shorturl.at

Beautiful work by @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and @mollyschumer.bsky.social on perhaps the most charismatic coloration trait in swordtails and platys!

Molly Schumer@mollyschumer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

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

i remember this great talk from Biology of Genomes - the sparkle phenotype!

Molly Schumer@mollyschumer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

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

Very happy to see this project submitted! Congrats @nadiahaghani.bsky.social !!

Molly Schumer@mollyschumer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

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

✨ this is the skin of a swimmer, Bella ✨ awesome work led by @nadiahaghani.bsky.social that identifies what makes a swordtail fish sparkle 🪩

Molly Schumer@mollyschumer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

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

Beyond excited to share my PhD work thus far, now up as a preprint! We found that a transposable element insertion is responsible for the recent evolution of an novel color trait. Feeling thankful to everyone who has helped in this project and thrilled to continue learning about "sparkle"!

Molly Schumer@mollyschumer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

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

Super excited that the bulk of my PhD work is now preprinted! Here we used whole-community competition, or coalescence, experiments to quantify selection acting on genetically diverged strains within larger communities. (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Insertion of an invading retrovirus regulates a novel color trait in swordtail fish https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.07.687308v1