Neelam Porwal
@neelamporwal.bsky.social
Ph.D. student studying sexual selection, population dynamics and extinction risks using mites and simulations. Most days I love to cook. 🦄
New pre-print led by the amazing @patricepottier.bsky.social - very little evidence for evolution of life history traits in response to warming, even in insects. Rapid adaptation is unlikely to mitigate the continuing impacts of climate change 🔥🔥🔥
Life-history traits do not always evolve in response to changing thermal environments doi.org/10.32942/X20...
Females hyenas have greter reproductive inequality due to social inheritance of privilege! The study I presented at @isbe2026.bsky.social and done with the @hyenaproject.bsky.social came out finally!! Check it out! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
really enjoying this figure on sexual dimorphism in hopliine beetles pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Our new paper is out in @nature.com! We uncovered how a naked mole-rat queen 👑 controls an entire colony: a natural contraceptive scent that suppresses reproduction in other females! A remarkable mammalian parallel to bees and ants! 🐝🐜 @garyrlewin.bsky.social youtu.be/enfv3zJrWKM?...
Naked mole-rats are ruled by a queen: this chemical puts her in power
YouTube video by nature video
youtu.be
Inaugural lecture! I will be talking about my research on how mating systems alter evolutionary processes and why this is important. This is a public lecture and should be fun and accessible to everyone: all welcome. Links in next post. 🧪
24hrs straight under the microscope and many many hours of counting later. Cheers to Neha for leading this study and all the people. Happy to have been a part of this. Still traumatised by the deutonymphs though.
New paper out in #Ecology Letters: We manipulated the presence of "fighter" and "scrambler" males in soil mite populations and showed that aggressive male behaviour reduces population size and stability. 🧪#SexualSelection #PopulationEcology onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The second chapter of my PhD is now available as a preprint 🦚. A lot of it came together during long days in front of my blue screen, and weekends spent watching puffins in the UK. With an amazing team @robknell.bsky.social @jacek-radwan.bsky.social Jonathan Parrett and @ecologycoder.bsky.social
1) New manuscript preprint up: we model adaptation to changing environments under mating systems ranging from random mating via mutual choice monogamy through to female choice polygyny. 🧪https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.715329v1
1) New manuscript preprint up: we model adaptation to changing environments under mating systems ranging from random mating via mutual choice monogamy through to female choice polygyny. 🧪https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.715329v1
biorxiv.org
Is male aggression good or bad for populations under heatwaves? Find out in our recently published article onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Fighting Through the Heat: How Male Aggression Influences Demography Under Recurrent Heatwaves
This study examines how male aggression influences population survival under recurrent heat stress using experimental evolution in Sancassania berlesei. We show that while sexually selected tr initia....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
@neelamporwal.bsky.social has just published this work on interacting eco-evo feedbacks between heatwaves and sensual selection on population dynamics - first output from an exciting project with a team inc @jacek-radwan.bsky.social @robknell.bsky.social #ecology #evolution
@neelamporwal.bsky.social ‘s talk about estimating extinction risks under sexual selection using simulations, at PEC2025 won the first prize for the best student talk. So, should animals swipe right for survival?🐧
We are having fantastic time presenting and discussing our work at #ESEB2025 - Neelam Porwal answered a question "How sexual selection shapes small populations demography under recurrent heatwaves"
We explore evolution’s thrilling battles, between and within sexes and, hosts vs. parasites. Our focus? Conservation genomics, experimental evolution, adaptation, and mutation dynamics, with special attention to sexual selection 🦌 in mites and host-pathogen coevolution in Borrelia and bank voles 🐀.