What a sad story. www.science.org/content/arti...

Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public

Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals

science.org

Just posted: a group paper describing major updates to my software pixy, for population genetic summary statistics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... New since 2021: arbitrary ploidy, multiallelic sites, missingness-aware Watterson's θ and Tajima's D, Hudson's FST, multicore execution!

Please share: Full-time PhD position on Butterfly Evolution at High Elevations 🦋⛰️ The project aims to understand the evolution and adaptation of Andean white butterflies using genomics. DEADLINE: September 11, 2026 More info: pavelmatos.wordpress.com/join-us/

Join us

Opportunities Below are the positions currently open in our lab. Open PhD position (full time) Comparative and Population Genomics of Butterflies at High Elevations. The project aims to understand …

pavelmatos.wordpress.com

Very cool pair of papers demonstrating little link between amount of additive genetic variation and amount of nucleotide variation within species: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species

Adaptive potential determines how populations respond to environmental change. This study compiles evolvability estimates from over 170 multicellular species, revealing substantial variation across th...

journals.plos.org

Our criteria for success are disastrously skewed. In my view, a successful person is one who does more good than harm, on any scale. On this measure, most billionaires are massive failures, while humble folk in my neighbourhood who look after other people are highly successful.

Renowned Evolutionary biologists Peter & Rosemary Grant are back with new research on adaptive radiation in Geospiza finches on Daphne Major, looking at the long term impacts of hybridization on 3 species of ground finch! You can read the full paper below 👇 🧪 (1/2) doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Fission, fusion and the generation of novelty in Geospiza species on Daphne Major Island, Galápagos

Abstract. Early stages in the adaptive radiation of Darwin’s finches are characterized by divergence (fission) and convergence (fusion) caused by natural s

doi.org

New preprint on the effect of ancient admixture / structure on genealogical trees. I introduce a new way of summarising reconstructed genealogies that captures a clear signal of ancient gene flow into the ancestors of modern humans. Feedback welcome!

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 3w ago

The distribution of integer partitions in human genome-wide genealogies reflects gene flow from a super-archaic lineage https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738421v1

The distribution of integer partitions in human genome-wide genealogies reflects gene flow from a super-archaic lineage https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738421v1

As you prepare for your holiday outings, please remember Monbiot’s Inviolable Law on Leaving the House: T = 2A² + 5C² Where T is time in minutes, A is adults and C is children.

Casillas et al. investigated the genetic basis of a unique longitudinal dorsal stripe pattern in adders from Gossa Island, identifying a significantly differentiated genomic region containing PMEL and a missense variant in this gene. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag144 #societyjournal #genome #colour

The greatest global threat to both peace and a habitable planet is the government of the USA. It has been so for a long time, but Trump has nixed the deniability. We should stop treating it as an ally that has mysteriously gone astray and start treating it as a hazard to be avoided and contained.

ERC StG results out. Rejected. Congratulations to the big winners!

Applications to the Gordon Research Seminar in Speciation are now open! We encourage PhD students & postdocs from all geographies, backgrounds, disciplines to APPLY! This 2d seminar in beautiful Lucca 🇮🇹 will be followed by a 5d conference open to the broader community. www.grc.org/speciation-g...

We published a new paper, which was a fun side quest of mine ➡️ 🧭❓🗺️ : Hybridization with wild individuals fuels reindeer domestication. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Hybridization with wild individuals fuels reindeer feralization

Abstract. Domestication has profoundly influenced the development of human agriculture, and is characterized by intense artificial selection. Feralization

royalsocietypublishing.org

Really fascinating (and sad) article.

Xavier Grau-Bové 🌾@xgrau.bsky.social · 3w ago

As necessary as it is to put faces and voices to the victims of Fascism, this is too little, too late, and too partial. It comes with neither reparations nor a true reckoning with the murderous ideology that brought this about, and the very real people behind it. www.science.org/content/arti...

V interesting perspective on how Nordic (Scandinavian) culture should not be linked to far-right movements. Also, this quote 🔥: "The alternative to cultural diversity is not progress but a global monoculture driven by hypercapitalism and American cultural imperialism". jacobin.com/2026/07/norw...

Norway’s Vikings Are Reclaiming Valhalla at the World Cup

The far right spent a century claiming the Vikings. Norway’s World Cup team — horned helmets, runes, a viral row-chant and all — just took them back.

jacobin.com

Coming late to this story: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50% arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/w...

Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

AI cheating leads to "a failed society," professor says.

arstechnica.com

Happy to share that Maëva Gabrielli's latest work on Zosterops borbonicus is now published in Evolution! Interested by identifying barrier loci with genomic data? I hope you will find this piece of work interesting! ⬇️ academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Accounting for recombination rate variation improves inference of barrier loci and reveals the role of both natural and sexual selection in an incipient bird radiation

Abstract. Examining genomic patterns of differentiation across lineage pairs at different stages of the speciation continuum, in combination with recombina

academic.oup.com

Hari Sridhar hs a nice bew paper on the role of natural history in ecology and evolution www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Spark, Scaffold, Substrate: The Multiple Hidden Roles of Natural History in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | The American Naturalist: Vol 0, No 0

AbstractOver the last 30 years, as ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) has become more theoretical, experimental, and data driven, there has been a growing worry that the space for natural history ...

journals.uchicago.edu

New paper out in Evolution 🧫🧬 doi.org/10.1093/evol... with a pretty big crew & @stelkens.bsky.social ! Story started over 20 years ago, fun to jump in late and help wrap it up :)

Adaptive Benefits of Hybridization in Saccharomyces Yeast are Constrained by Genomic Background and Depend on Temperature

Abstract. Climate change urges us to better understand and predict evolutionary responses to temperature shifts. Hybridization, by increasing genetic varia

doi.org

How do coevolutionary interactions begin in nature, and what are the first steps of reciprocal adaptation? Our preprint investigates these questions in a natural experiment: an introduced cricket (T. oceanicus) and its acoustically hunting parasitoid (O. ochracea) in Hawaii. shorturl.at/7llsA 1/n

Ecological genomics of a novel host-parasitoid arms-race in nature

Novel antagonistic interactions between species are expected to drive especially rapid coevolution. However, little is known about the genomic basis of such coevolution in nature because novel inter-s...

shorturl.at

It's a wrap #smbe2026. We displayed work on Ancestral Recombination Graphs in hybrid speciation (Alex Mackintosh), an admixed lineage in Gorgona island (Geraldine Rueda-Muñoz), theory of niche conservatism (Martin Eriksson) and GWAS sample size (Diego Salazar). Ready for the next conference!

Today marks one of the most important days in the history of Science. OTD in 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace revealed the idea of evolution by natural selection @linneansociety.bsky.social meeting (although any of them was actually present) darwin-online.org.uk/content/fram...

"Measurements of lizard carcasses found near colonies indicate that cats preferentially prey on larger individuals, explaining both their reduced abundance and their smaller body size" @airamrodriguez.bsky.social et al. Biol Lett. @royalsociety.org 🧪🌎🐊

Airam Rodríguez@airamrodriguez.bsky.social · last mo.

🌍 Cat colonies reshape the abundance and body size of lizards doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

A horrible idea, with a low of subliminar consequences.

Carl Zimmer@carlzimmer.com · last mo.

The US government is entering a partnership to store frozen cells and other biological samples from endangered and threatened species with Colossal, a private company best known for claiming to "de-extinct" dire wolves. Story by me & @catrineinhorn.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/43Rzhfw

Looking forward for #smbe2026. Let me know if you're around and want to meet and discuss science!

I am recruiting a PhD student (fully funded, 4yrs) to analyze modern 🧬 and ancient 🦴 genomic data from humans and domestic animals 🐑 Please share, I am happy to chat at #ICP2026 or #SMBE2026 this summer www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

This very interesting paper shows the degree to which speciation research is now dominated by genomic approaches, and argues (among other things) that since it's an unreliable way to measure reproductive isolation (RI), we should place less emphasis on it. academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

The identity crisis of speciation genomics

Abstract. Understanding how reproductive isolation (RI) evolves remains a central goal of speciation research. Quantifying RI is challenging, and researche

academic.oup.com