Amazing paper here that I am psyched to be a part of. Alvaro, @alexdemendoza.bsky.social @obog.bsky.social and team helped us resurrect the name Physalia utriculus for this widespread bluebottle, and now present some of the most comprehensive genomic work I have seen for any open ocean species

Alex de Mendoza@alexdemendoza.bsky.social · 7d ago

Sailing in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ready for summer, our study on the iconic Portuguese man o' war 🪼 is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... We use (epi)genomics to understand a critter that fascinates me since childhood. Massive team effort with @obog.bsky.social, Cummins and Neely groups. 🧵

Happy to be back at #Evol2026, its been a fantastic meeting so far. I'll be presenting a poster on Tuesday about `corpus`: github.com/caseywdunn/c... a new tool for extracting data from biodiversity literature, in collaboration with @caseywdunn.bsky.social @fzapata.bsky.social and Maciej Mańko. 1/2

Super excited to have been part of the project using participatory science to study flower color variation, led by @patrickmckenzie.bsky.social!

American Naturalist / ASN 🐌@asn-amnat.bsky.social · 3mo ago

McKenzie et al. applied a novel pipeline to automate floral color phenotyping from community science photographs, supporting anecdotal evidence that Monarda fistulosa is deeper purple in western vs. eastern North America. Read now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

So cool to see our work highlighted here! Thanks @botany.one ! And, re: the question “were you one of the observers in our dataset,” besides in the paper supplement, there’s a full list of them here: github.com/pmckenz1/mon...

Botany One@botany.one · 4mo ago

How Thousands of Phone Snapshots Solved a Flower Colour Mystery www.botany.one/how-thousand... Nearly 10,000 People Helped Confirm a Botanical Hunch. Were You One of Them? #Botany #PlantScience

Ever wanted to assemble specific genes out of raw sequence reads? Try sharkmer, a tool for in silico PCR (sPCR) developed with @shchurch.bsky.social - academic.oup.com/bioinformati.... Feed it raw reads and primer sequences, it gives you amplicon sequences. Can work on a laptop in minutes.

Sharkmer: repurposing PCR primers for targeted genome assembly using in silico PCR

AbstractSummary. We introduce an in silico PCR (sPCR) method for the assembly of specific genomic regions spanned by PCR primers using raw sequence reads.

academic.oup.com

@caseywdunn.bsky.social and I have a new tool for "in silico PCR" out in Bioinformatics: 🦈 sharkmer 🦈 With a subsample of raw reads and a few minutes, you can assemble your favorite barcode sequences! Try it out and let us know how we can make it better: github.com/caseywdunn/s...

GitHub - caseywdunn/sharkmer

Contribute to caseywdunn/sharkmer development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Casey Dunn@caseywdunn.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Ever wanted to assemble specific genes out of raw sequence reads? Try sharkmer, a tool for in silico PCR (sPCR) developed with @shchurch.bsky.social - academic.oup.com/bioinformati.... Feed it raw reads and primer sequences, it gives you amplicon sequences. Can work on a laptop in minutes.

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!

Need a break from EVERYTHING?? Come join our free public talk this evening, where NYU professor Dr. Samuel Church will tell us all about his hunt for new blue bottle (man-o-war) species 🪼🧪🌊🦑 7:30 PM (EST) Zoom link: u-tokyo-ac-jp.zoom.us/j/8337406906... Meeting ID: 833 7406 9068 Passcode: 430292

Applications are now open for the 2026 Workshop on Molecular Evolution (MOLE)! www.mbl.edu/education/ad... Claudia Solis-Lemus and I will be holding an informational session on Zoom next Wed (1/21) from 10:30-11:30 AM Central for those interested: lsu.zoom.us/j/4968115684 Deadline to apply: 1/26

Workshop on Molecular Evolution | Marine Biological Laboratory

The workshop serves graduate students, postdocs, and established faculty from around the world seeking to apply the principles of molecular evolution to questions of anthropology, conservation genetic...

mbl.edu

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

The Church Evolution Lab (CEL@NYU) is hiring a postdoc! We have several new projects to study the genomic basis of biodiversity in model clades – especially Hawaiian Drosophila. apply.interfolio.com/179354 Come join our new group, you can study bugs and live in NYC! Feel free to share widely!

It was amazing to be part of this cool natural history project led by @patrickmckenzie.bsky.social, and I’m so happy I can now say I have worked on plants!

Patrick McKenzie@patrickmckenzie.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Available now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social ! Taking on some big-scale natural history: processed >40k @inaturalist.bsky.social images of Monarda fistulosa using computer vision to query for flower presence and phenotype flower color: doi.org/10.1086/739413

Our NY area population genetics meeting is back and "upgraded", as Simons Foundation @simonsfoundation.org generously agreed to host. Please save the date: March 9, 2026. Look forward to seeing many of you from NY and beyond.

Molly Przeworski@mollyprz.bsky.social · 9mo ago

SAVE THE DATE: the yearly NY Population Genetics meeting will be back on March 9 2026, generously hosted by the @simonsfoundation.org. Details to follow. Please RT.

In our last thread, we left the jelly-enjoyers of Bluesky with a cliff hanger ending, in what one eager onlooker described as soap opera science 😜 ... wait no more, we are back! Grab your popcorn shrimp and come with us on a journey spanning more than... bsky.app/profile/iwan...

Tom Iwanicki@iwanicki.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Kailua Beach, Hawai’i: The first time I laid eyes on a By-the-wind sailor, I stopped dead in my tracks, dusted the sand off my hands, grabbed my iphone and...

Still a few days left to apply for this Assistant Professor position in our department at NYU: apply.interfolio.com/175592 Please pass the word around, if you know of someone at the interface of ecology, evolution, and disease!

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

The Church Evolution Laboratory (CEL@NYU) will be official as of Sep 1st: shchurch.github.io. We are recruiting at all levels, including a postdoc to work on evolutionary patterns and processes via comparative genomics in Hawaiian Drosophila. Please share widely!

Such cool work by @rbabedon.bsky.social! These results came from his awesome senior thesis on Atlantic man-o-war dispersal. He found iNat (@inaturalist.bsky.social) records of young colonies, they look like tiny living bubbles before they grow into the sailing giants we sometimes see further North

River B Abedon@rbabedon.bsky.social · 12mo ago

As the Gulf Stream carries man o’ war colonies north, winds push them on shore 🏖️, causing strandings along the U.S. East Coast - from Florida in the winter to New England in the summer.

Check out our preprint 🧪 on the origin & dispersal dynamics of a sailing ⛵ #siphonophore! We use #iNaturalist and particle tracking simulations to show that juvenile man o' war surface in the Gulf of Mexico & Straits of FL and disperse rapidly along the Gulf Stream 🌊 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

From surfacing to stranding: The origins and dispersal dynamics of a neustonic siphonophore

The siphonophore Physalia physalis regularly strands along the US East Coast, yet the dynamics driving its seasonal and geographic distribution in this region remain poorly understood. Building on a n...

biorxiv.org

A big blow to All of Science, not just Harvard, not just the Fly community, not just Genetics. All of Science. Turbocharge was just switched off. Flies gave us so many insights.

Dr Sian Gramates@drglam.bsky.social · 12mo ago

I just got the notice that all the FlyBase people at Harvard, including me, will be laid off on October 12. I'm devastated.

Marine biodiversity: Gone with the wind? Our dispatch out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social New research shows that wind and currents act as invisible barriers, reshaping our view of ocean connectivity. 🌊🪼 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lYLj3QW8S... @iramaegele.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Wish I could be at #Evol2025 this year! I’ll be starting a new lab at NYU this fall, and will be recruiting at all levels. Please spread the word if you know anyone who wants to work on evo. genomics, phylogenies, and comparative development of inverts (like Hawaiian Drosophila!) shchurch.github.io

Excited to share our study on sailing siphonophores, AKA bluebottles or man-o'-war! 🌊 we received hundreds of samples from scientists around the world, part of a huge effort to sequence genomes and test for multiple species 🧬 out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... 🦑🧪📌

New preprint out today! A really fun collaboration with @shchurch.bsky.social and Robin Hopkins in which we study flower color variation in Monarda fistulosa using iNaturalist data. We process >40,000 images and use them to phenotype flower color in >16,000 observations: doi.org/10.1101/2025...