With a project like that join the global effort! Get in touch for application details!

We (@rileyshultz.bsky.social) tracked a recessive mutation from birth to death in honey bees. It causes ivory eyes. We collaborated across the continent to identify the mutation and it's downstream effects. Ultimately it is purified through selection on drones. We think Hamilton would be pleased!

Molecular Biology and Evolution@molbioevol.bsky.social · 6d ago

Shultz @beeharpur.bsky.social et al. documented the trajectory of a spontaneous deleterious mutation from its origin in a single queen to its extinction, directly observing how haplodiploidy exposes recessive alleles to immediate purifying selection 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag156 #societyjournal

We already do this and companies who want them are happy to pay for PhD student interns. Why do precious and limited NSF funds need to be deployed for this? Most PhD student pursue industry jobs anyways - that has always been true. Use NSF funds to support basic science that industry wont support!

Jonathan Wosen@jonathanwosen.bsky.social · 7d ago

With academic jobs few and far between, the NSF is testing a new approach to graduate education: Giving Ph.D. students industry experience — and dollars — as part of their training. For more, see my latest for @statnews.com. www.statnews.com/2026/07/29/h...

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

Our paper on how better amino acid substitution matrices trained on cleaned alignments improve gene tree inference, and on best practice for cleaning MSAs more broadly, is now out academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-.... New options in both IQTree and Muscle5. @phylowheeler.bsky.social

Improved gene tree inference from removing alignment errors both from focal genes and when training substitution models

Abstract. Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) is a key step in phylogenetic analysis and is prone to error. Unfortunately, algorithms that remove likely alig

academic.oup.com

Joanna Masel@joannamasel.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Sequence alignments are notoriously prone to error. Our latest preprint offers a new tool for filtering errors out, assesses it and other filtering tools, and recommends new best practice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @phylowheeler.bsky.social 1/10

Have ONE more spot! First come first serve!

Dmitri Petrov@petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Very pleased with the response and still have spots & funding especially for students/postdocs. Sign up soon before it gets full. If you are working at or wanting to learn about the intersection of functional biology and ecology/evolution, you would get a lot of it! www.grc.org/function-of-...

Makes sense. In large swathes of Europe CDV is rare in dogs but prevalent (regionally) among red foxes. They seem to be currently a major reservoir. We are seeing recovery of many mesocarnivores across Europe, enlarging the community of hosts for CDV

I am very excited about a new paper from our lab by @nicole-nova.bsky.social and @kasolari.bsky.social on the persistence of CDV in wild populations. Our first foray into evolution and ecology of infectious disease. 1/n

Nicole Nova@nicole-nova.bsky.social · 2w ago

Our results challenge the prevailing idea that acute, immunizing viruses need domestic animal reservoirs to persist. Instead, sufficiently connected wildlife communities may be able to sustain transmission on their own, reshaping how we think about reservoir systems for this entire class of viruses.

Our results challenge the prevailing idea that acute, immunizing viruses need domestic animal reservoirs to persist. Instead, sufficiently connected wildlife communities may be able to sustain transmission on their own, reshaping how we think about reservoir systems for this entire class of viruses.

This one-of-a-kind study was only possible due to the precious Alaska samples provided by co-author Kimberlee Beckmen and colleagues at Alaska Department of Fish and Game. We're also grateful to co-author Ellen Brandell and the rest of the Yellowstone Wolf Project for obtaining the wolf sample.

A special shout-out to my project partner and co-first author Katie Solari (@kasolari.bsky.social) for developing the approach for sequencing a new branch of CDV genomes as it posed a real challenge, especially from old samples.

A fundamental question in disease ecology remains unresolved: How can an acute, immunizing virus persist in nature? Theory says viruses like measles need huge pools of susceptible hosts. Our new preprint offers an answer. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Persistent, Multi-Species Outbreaks and Long-Range Transmissions of a Measles-Like Virus

Canine distemper\---|a measles-like disease with high mortality and presently without a cure\---|poses a major threat to wild and domestic carnivores globally. Domestic dogs are generally considered t...

biorxiv.org

Cannot be more excited about the lineup for the inaugural Function of Evolving Systems GRC conference I am co-organizing with the amazing Joy Bergelson. Less than a month away: August 9 - 14, 2026. Still a few spots left! And do check out the amazing list of speakers: www.grc.org/function-of-...

‘A society that loses science loses the future’ says Neil Shubin, as he starts his tenure as the NAS President @neilshubin.bsky.social - thank you for speaking to us @nature.com 🧪 #AcademicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Incoming US science academy chief vows to ‘double down’ on research

New leader of the National Academy of Sciences Neil Shubin warns: ‘a society that loses science loses the future’.

nature.com

How good is MiniBWA, the successor to BWA? To test it, I ran MiniBWA on sequencing from 76 different species, comparing mapping speed, rate and accuracy with BWA MEM. In short, it's really good. If you map short reads, it's well worth your time. andrewcarroll.github.io/2026/06/30/t...

Votes for the 2026 SMBE election have been counted, and we are happy to announce that Dmitri Petrov will be the next President-Elect of SMBE, with Esther Betran and Sohini Ramachandran as the new Councilors. They will join the Council in 2027, serving 3-year terms. Congratulations! #society

Day 4 at #SMBE2026 and the keynote talk is on “Evolution in the human gut microbiome” 🦠🧬 Associate Professor Martin Sikora welcomed Associate Professor @nanditagarud.bsky.social from UCLA to the stage where she shared a very interesting talk with the @official-smbe.bsky.social community 🤩

Please welcome @vscooper.micropopbio.org as the new ASM President and Federico Sisti, Ph.D., as President-Elect. They begin their terms on July 1. ASM congratulates its new & continuing leaders and looks forward to their leadership in advancing ASM’s mission. asm.social/2Zx

😮 @danielgorelick.bsky.social @biologyopen.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why paying peer reviewers works, according to a journal’s editor-in-chief

A biology journal that paid peer reviewers found that the approach cut the time to a first editorial decision by 85% and maintained high-quality reviews.

nature.com

Sad to be missing #SMBE2026 in general but missing @nanditagarud.bsky.social plenary is particularly painful!

We are very excited to share our latest. We thought that soft sweeps would be the only type of sweep spreading across human gut microbiomes. Turns out many are hard! Reach @peterlaurin.bsky.social 's thread on why! And tomorrow at #SMBE2026 I will share this work and more!

Peter Laurin@peterlaurin.bsky.social · last mo.

Super excited to share new work with my advisor @nanditagarud.bsky.social! We re-examine the rapidity of adaptation in the human gut microbiome and begin to characterize the adaptive architecture of selective sweeps spreading across human guts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10... 1/n:

This is wonderful news!

SeYeon Chung@seyeonchung.bsky.social · last mo.

So grateful for the new Kathy Matthews Endowment for the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center. A wonderful tribute by Kathy's husband, Lawrence Washington, that will help preserve Kathy's legacy and support the fly community for years to come. biology.indiana.edu/news-events/...

Very pleased with the response and still have spots & funding especially for students/postdocs. Sign up soon before it gets full. If you are working at or wanting to learn about the intersection of functional biology and ecology/evolution, you would get a lot of it! www.grc.org/function-of-...

Kamila Naxerova@naxerova.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Please join us in NH (perfect place to be in August!) for this inspiring conference organized by @petrovadmitri.bsky.social and Joy Bergelson. Very interdisciplinary, so I look forward to learning tons of new concepts. www.grc.org/function-of-...

Please join us in NH (perfect place to be in August!) for this inspiring conference organized by @petrovadmitri.bsky.social and Joy Bergelson. Very interdisciplinary, so I look forward to learning tons of new concepts. www.grc.org/function-of-...

New research in #G3journal leverages ultra-long Nanopore #sequencing to identify structural variants. 🧬 @jahemker.bsky.social, @petrovadmitri.bsky.social and the team also present new high-coverage (>100x) long-read assemblies for #Drosophila inbred lines. 🪰 🔗 buff.ly/j3v3GAY

Excited to be at #PEQG26! I have a poster tonight on measuring selection on intraspecies variation in large microbial communities (415W), would love to hear what folks think!

I agree. Sorry I missed your paper. I does remind me of this one doi.org/10.1371/jour... by @petrovadmitri.bsky.social

Evidence that Adaptation in Drosophila Is Not Limited by Mutation at Single Sites

Author Summary Adaptation in eukaryotes is often assumed to be limited by the waiting time for adaptive mutations. This is because effective population sizes are relatively small, typically on the ord...

doi.org

I have started updating my website because I am no longer at San Francisco State. I also wrote on my website landing page that I am writing a book about my favorite topic: evolution of drug resistance. That's my biggest goal for the year! pleunipennings.wordpress.com

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Helen Branswell 🇨🇦@helenbranswell.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I find this unsettling: A new study in #Lancet shows that the number of faux citations in scientific articles is on the rise, and #AI is likely to blame. @aniloza.bsky.social reports. www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/l...