I gave an interview for the public event of Munich's Soapbox Science 🙉 you can read it here🧵👇🏼

🙉 Presenting my progress working on the evolutionary relevance of epigenetic variation focusing on DNA methylation reliability at #SMBE2026 in the symposium S22 Evolution of gene regulation: insights from novel molecular and statistical approaches.

Hey friends! Hanging at #SMBE 2026? Do you work with weird distributions and messy data? You are not alone! Come to my talk in S22 at 15.10 on Wednesday to find solutions and a shoulder to cry.

Greece learned this the hard way in 1987. Nobody owed an AC back then and 1300 people died in that heatwave mostly old people in the city. Next year almost everyone installed private AC. Seeing this attitude in Germany im always scared of history repeating itself.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Heat already kills 175k people in Europe annually. With climate change making heatwaves worse, people need to start seeing air conditioning as life-saving rather than a luxury.

Now im also thinking/wondering about this 😵‍💫

Mark Hibbins, Great Lakes Swashbuckler@rejectresubmit.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Been thinking/wondering about this more recently!

Hi friends! I love talking science with people who aren't scientists. This time I get to talk about my favourite topic: my PhD! 🎉 Soapbox Science shows that scientists aren't just old men with beards. Curious about birds & DNA methylation? Komm vorbei und besuch meinen Stand!

Soapbox Science Munich@munichsoapbox.bsky.social · 2mo ago

**English below** Habt ihr euch jemals gefragt, warum ihr euren Eltern zwar ähnlich seht, aber bei der Geburt nicht automatisch dieselbe Sprache sprecht wie sie? 🤔 Kommt zu #SoapboxScience Munich und findet es heraus! 💡 👇👇👇

Our mystery deer paper is finally out! We used ancient DNA to clarify the systematics of Torontoceros hypogaeus, an 11k years old fossil discovered during excavation work for the Toronto subway in 1976. Due to its unique antler morphology, it was described as an extinct deer species, but ...

Matrilines attack, for the hosts there is no hope. Egg kaleidoscope. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Genomic architecture of egg mimicry and its consequences for speciation in parasitic cuckoos

Host-parasite arms races facilitate rapid evolution and can fuel speciation. Cuculus cuckoos are deceptive egg mimics that exhibit a broad diversity of counterfeit egg phenotypes, representing host-ad...

science.org

Blau, weiß, grünlich: Wie schafft es der Kuckuck, seine Eierfarbe an unterschiedliche Wirtsvögel anzupassen? LMU-Forschende zeigen: Die Farbe wird über die Mutterlinie vererbt – das ermöglicht Anpassung ohne Aufspaltung in spezialisierte Populationen. @mpiforbi.bsky.social www.lmu.de/de/newsroom/...

Kuckuck: Mütterliche Gene sorgen für verschiedenfarbige Eier

Je nach Wirtsvogel legen Europäische Kuckucke ganz unterschiedliche Eier. Genetische Analysen zeigen, wie diese Anpassung vererbt wird, ohne dass es zur Aufspaltung der Art kommt.

lmu.de

Just out! Andre Amaral´s latest paper "First fossil mosquito larva in 99-million-year-old amber with a modern type of morphology sheds light on the evolutionary history of mosquitoes" is now published 🎉 Read here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Your daily Avian Hybrids story! Do crows engage in extra-pair copulations to avoid hybridization? avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2020/07/02/d... #ornithology

Do crows engage in extra-pair copulations to avoid hybridization?

Extra-pair copulations might be a suitable strategy to circumvent the fitness costs of interbreeding.

avianhybrids.wordpress.com

I'm hiring a postdoc to work in theoretical / computational phylogenomics! More info at tinyurl.com/63hb5ew8. Please share!

Two million bases defy conformity. Meth rebels follow lead. Merondun (2025) Mol Ecol doi.org/10.1111/mec....

DNA Methylation Reflects Cis‐Genetic Differentiation Across the European Crow Hybrid Zone

Chromatin modifications provide a substrate for epigenetic variation with evolutionary potential. To quantify the contribution of this layer of variation during speciation in crows, we leveraged geno...

doi.org

Is there an independent role of epigenetic variation in speciation? We looked for answers in the crow hybrid zone. In brief: DNA seems to be in the driving seat. Congrats Justin! This was a long journey. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Despite their strikingly different plumage, carrion and hooded crows show strong asymmetrical gene flow hidden beneath the feathers #hybridzone #evolution #demography #bird onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....