"How two hybridizing monkeyflowers resist phenotypic homogenization" I'm very happy to share this. We would really appreciate your feedback!

Jenn Coughlan@jenncoughlan.bsky.social · 3d ago

So proud of this manuscript- lead by the fantastic @henryarenas.bsky.social with two undergraduates (Cage Cochran and Quinn Evans) each doing a Herculean effort during their honors theses, and Hongfei Chen helping out tremendously with lab work. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

13. Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well.

Good news! Our paper (with @aabiddanda.github.io @sarahaj34.bsky.social @codushlaine.bsky.social and Priya Moorjani) is now officially online! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs

Admixture between modern humans and extinct hominins has shaped the genomes of present-day individuals, but reconstructing this history has been constrained by the scarcity of archaic samples and unad...

science.org

Yulin Zhang@yulinzhang.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Have you ever wondered how many archaic populations contributed DNA to modern humans? We know about Neanderthals and Denisovans, but the fossil and genetic evidence suggests a much more complex history! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Did you know that the flowers of avocado trees change sex every day? Scientists have noticed this nearly 100 years ago but only now do we how it works. Life is amazing.

Avocado flowers switch sex daily—now we know why

New work explains how avocado trees coordinate a complex reproductive strategy, switching every day between male and female

scientificamerican.com

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

recent paper cites a paper from my phd with a blatantly factually incorrect statement, hallucinating a 4.5 Mb inversion. hard to say how this could have resulted from a human reading the paper

Very cool postdoc opportunities to study evolutionary genomics and ecology of tropical trees, including one position at UC Berkeley. stri.si.edu/story/bci-ev...

BCI Evolutionary Dynamics and Genomic Ecology project

stri.si.edu

So excited to announce our search for 4 postdocs (funded by the Simons Foundation) who will use genomics to "test how ecological interactions, natural selection, natural enemies, hybridization & environmental gradients shape...tropical tree communities" in Panama: stri.si.edu/story/bci-ev... ...1

As everyone's winding down on #evol2026 we want to share our survey link with you again. Whether you work in reproductive biology specifically or not, please take a minute to help us understand how the scientific community uses reproductive terms in research! And hope to see you at #SMBE!

Congrats to all the finalists in the James Crow award symposium at #PEQG26. Tuning in virtually with major FOMO!

Why do sex chromosomes stop recombining? New models show even weak sexual antagonism can strongly drive recombination suppression, with mating systems shaping the outcome. By @ewanflintham.bsky.social and @charlesmullon.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Sexual antagonism, mating systems, and recombination suppression on sex chromosomes

Abstract. The suppression of recombination between sex chromosomes is a widespread feature of genetic sex determination systems. Competing explanations for

doi.org

Thrilled that our new review article on animal hybridization is now up on EcoEvoRxiv! 🎉 Working on this review with @mollyschumer.bsky.social was a blast, and it was such a wonderful opportunity to catch up on all the amazing work in animal hybridization over the last few years!

Molly Schumer@mollyschumer.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Excited to share this new pre-print from the fantastic @kelsiehunnicutt.bsky.social! Kelsie put together a thoughtful and thorough review on hybridization in animal evolution: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v.... She tracks notable shifts in perspectives on the study of hybridization through time.

Ever wondered what makes some alleles dominant (A) and others recessive (a) ? In our new paper, we explored how a series of recently discovered "dominance modifiers", genetic elements that have long remained elusive, achieve their regulatory function. journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Dominance modifiers at the Arabidopsis self-incompatibility locus retain proto-miRNA features and act through non-canonical pathways

Author summary Many plants avoid self-fertilization through a system of self-incompatibility, which allows them to recognize and reject their own pollen. In plants like those in the Arabidopsis family...

journals.plos.org

Sometimes you just get that shot. Anna's hummingbird with a little friend, in my yard. Davis, CA. #birds #ants

🚨 PhD position available ! 🚨 I am hiring a PhD student to work with me on the evolution of plant sexual systems 🌺 at @unifrbiology.bsky.social ! The position is funded for 4 years by @snsf.ch as part of my Ambizione fellowship. More info here: tinyurl.com/monoecy 🌱 Please RP and share widely ! 🌱

Sexually antagonistic environments and the stability of environmental sex determination https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.08.710415v1

I am SO THRILLED to share our first fully-lab lab paper!!!!!! Led by @hybridzones.bsky.social & @hagarsoliman.bsky.social, w/ a major assist from @pfschwarz.bsky.social!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read more below, if you're curious (you should be- it's AWESOME!!!!!!!) link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Introgression and parental conflict shape repeated occurrences of postzygotic isolation in Mimulus

Postzygotic reproductive isolation is often thought to accumulate as a byproduct of neutral divergence. Yet it frequently evolves rapidly, in line wit…

sciencedirect.com

MKado: a toolkit for McDonald-Kreitman tests of natural selection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.02.709122v1

I'm super excited to share that this article was published today in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... All made possible by the fantastic group of donors, volunteers and scientists at The American Chestnut Foundation (tacf.org), HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, and our collaborators.

Genomic approaches to accelerate American chestnut restoration

More than a century after two introduced pathogens killed billions of American chestnut trees, introgression of resistance alleles from Chinese chestnuts has contributed to the recovery of self-sustai...

science.org

John Lovell@jotlovell.bsky.social · 2y ago

Our paper on the past, present, and genomics-enabled future of American chestnut (Castanea dentata) tree breeding for resistance to invasive pathogens is on BioRxiv. 🧵with some background and a few things we found 👇 bsky.app/profile/bior...

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

Davis Summer Population Genomics Program

Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

docs.google.com

New paper! From Sam Snodgrass and @genomeofforrest.bsky.social, w/ @druncie.bsky.social, @gcbias.bsky.social, and a collaboration with Andres Moreno and @santiagogmm.bsky.social. Can we quantify the impact of humans on maize dispersal? Plant yourself in a comfy chair and lend me your ear: 1/10

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

New preprint is up! Not going spoil the results for you 🤓 but we looked at some “bird” vs “bee”-pollinated Penstemon hybrid zones and came away with some pretty unexpected results!

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Genomic signatures of reproductive isolation are decoupled from floral divergence in a long-standing hybrid zone https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.17.700129v1

… Bernie Sanders statement: “Donald Trump has, once again, shown his contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law….”

Did you know there are 2 types of avocado varieties? A-types switch from female to male, B-types male to female, within a single day. This reciprocal sex alternation promotes cross-pollination and has a simple genetic basis. Read more in this recent preprint from the final chapter of my PhD thesis 🥑

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies an ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, pollination occurs via a synchronized rhythm of floral sex timing between two hermaphroditic flowering types. A-type plants present female-phase flo...

biorxiv.org

Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies an ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.695989v1

I’ll never look at avocados in quite the same way: The latest from UC Berkeley Miller Fellow Jeff Groh who sits in my lab and Ben Blackman’s lab. He works on balancing selection and molecular mechanisms underlying the coevolutionary phenomenon of mating type alternation (PhD with Graham Koop).

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies an ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.695989v1

Very excited to share the capstone of my postdoc work with @stepheniwright.bsky.social, co-led by Wright lab grad student Cassandre with contributions from many others. We combined new methods with high-quality Rumex assemblies to dive into the remarkable history of rearrangement in this genus.

Rapid evolution of synteny associated with multiple origins of dioecy and XY sex determination

Chromosomal rearrangements are a major driver of evolutionary innovation, shaping processes including local adaptation, speciation, and sex chromosome evolution. Multispecies synteny datasets are rich...

biorxiv.org

🧬 Just out in Bioinformatics Advances: “tskit arg visualizer: Interactive plotting of ancestral recombination graphs.”  Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf302 Authors include: @kitchensjn.bsky.social, @yanwong.bsky.social

I am currently searching for a new postdoctoral researcher to study the evolution, genetics, and physiology of cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in switchgrass at Michigan State University. This work will be funded by a newly funded five-year DOE grant. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

Research Associate-Fixed Term - East Lansing, Michigan, United States

Position Summary The Lowry Lab at Michigan State University is searching for a postdoctoral research associate to conduct molecular and physiological experiments to understand the causes of genetic va...

careers.msu.edu