New paper out in PNAS! 🍇🧬 Vitis phylogenomics is a tangled vine. Highlights: • ~14% of the average grape genome comes from introgression • Two classic “hybrid species” are better described as hybrid swarms • Repeated adaptation is fueled by introgression and standing genetic variation

The dynamics of introgression and parallel adaptation across North American Vitis species | PNAS

Hybridization between species can contribute to parallel adaptive events. However, the prevalence of introgression is rarely measured across multip...

pnas.org

🧵1/6 New paper from #NearLab dropped! Wood et al. (2026) tackle a long-standing mystery: how did freshwater perches, walleyes, and darters (Percidae) end up on BOTH sides of the Atlantic? Spoiler: they may have swum there. 🐟🌊 #Ichthyology #Evolution #Systematics

I’m excited to be guest editing a JoVE Topical Collection on behavioral genomics across fish diversity! 🐟🧬 We welcome articles linking genes, genomes, neural systems, and behavior in fishes. Please get in touch with any questions and submit abstracts here by Oct. 3: www.jove.com/methods-coll...

uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job... The Kreiner and Carley Lab groups are hiring a shared Research Analyst to help lead wet lab protocol development and management. We're a fun group and would love to hear from you :) Get in touch with questions!

Research, Analyst

Department BSD E&E Carley Lab About the Department The Kreiner Lab (kreinerlab.com) and Carley Lab (carleylab.uchicago.edu) in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at The University of Chicag...

uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com

🧵 New paper! We’re excited to release OPTICS: software that immediately predicts color sensitivity from any opsin protein sequence. In other words: give OPTICS any opsin sequence, and it predicts the wavelength of light the pigment is most sensitive to 🌈👁️ academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Accessible and Robust Machine Learning Approaches to Improve the Opsin Genotype-Phenotype Map

Abstract. Predicting phenotypes from genetic variation is a central challenge in biology. Here, machine learning (ML) offers great promise, but its use is

academic.oup.com

One of the world's leading brain research centers is shifting away from fruit flies and toward a tiny, transparent fish. The goal: to understand how brains control the behavior of an animal or human. n.pr/4vV8dYM

Is a transparent fish the future of brain science? This center is betting on it

One of the world's leading brain research centers is shifting away from fruit flies and toward a tiny, transparent fish. The goal: to understand how brains control the behavior of an animal or human.

n.pr

Paper alert!🧬🐦💻 Divergent selection is the textbook explanation for narrow inversion clines. Our blackcap inversion cline doesn't fit: it is wide, and the inversion is always the rarer arrangement. We show that negative frequency-dependent selection shifting between populations underlies this!

Shifting Balancing Selection Underlies an Inversion Cline in Eurasian Blackcap

We investigated what factor contributes to a cline of a chromosomal inversion of the Eurasian blackcap, which differs from typical inversion clines maintained by divergent selection. Using a simulati...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

People. @ksamuk.bsky.social and others have made this argument before. There’s good software to do this right. Here’s the argument again: Invariant sites matter! They’re not in your standard vcf and many programs pretend they are anyway. academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

A Recipe for a Good π. How to Properly Estimate Population Genetics Summary Statistics and Why we Should Systematically Report Them

Abstract. Many long-standing questions in population genomics can now be addressed through comparative analyses and by leveraging the vast amount of genomi

academic.oup.com

Polymorphisms are fun to study, here is a butterfly one. Negative freq.dependence works to maintain things but where does it come from? Temporal variation works but not always! @koraklein.bsky.social and @chriswheat.bsky.social looked into this in detail. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Emergence time difference can create negative frequency dependence and maintain a colour polymorphism in Colias butterflies

Abstract. Many species of Colias butterflies show a female-limited colour polymorphism where the dominant Alba allele leads to white wings, faster developm

royalsocietypublishing.org

Excited to share a new review by @kocherlab.bsky.social and me: Nature-inspired neuroscience We discuss diverse sensory systems and behaviors across the animal kingdom and argue for their integration into neuroscience. New tools in diverse systems are making this possible ✨ tinyurl.com/y5y9du27

Have you ever wondered if fish yawn? (and if they do, what that tells us about yawning?) The first preprint from the lab and a serendipitous observation ⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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.

Proposals are due soon for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants! This year the R. C. Lewontin Early Award and Rosemary Grant Advanced Award are both due on May 18. Be sure to review the application instructions and apply soon! www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

The barnacles are on the loose! Check out my preprint with @stsmall.bsky.social, @johnwares.bsky.social, Erin Jezuit, and Andy Kern: The genome of the Pacific acorn barnacle provides insights into the evolution of extremely large populations doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n

New paper led by @taylorblack.bsky.social shows AVT modulates aggression in darter lineages with nest site territoriality and paternal care but elicits no behavioral response in a species that secondarily lost territoriality and care www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lineage-specific decoupling of arginine vasotocin-evoked aggression in male darters (Percidae: Etheostomatinae)

The repeated evolution of parental care is often accompanied by shifts in the neural circuits and hormonal pathways that regulate motivation and aggre…

sciencedirect.com

Spread the word! UChicago BSD is currently searching for an instructional professor (open rank) to help develop and support graduate training in quantitative biology at UChicago. This is an Instructional Professor position (open rank). apply.interfolio.com/183517.

Proposals are due May 18 for this year’s Graduate Research Excellence Grants! Up to $2500 for 1st and 2nd year grad students and up to $3500 for 3rd years and above. Learn more and apply now! www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

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

I’m excited to be giving an Armour seminar at the Field Museum tomorrow for Woman’s History Month! www.fieldmuseum.org/our-events/a...

Remembering Barbara McClintock on International Women's Day! She discovered that genes aren't static, they can actually "jump" around on a chromosome. Her discovery of transposons ("jumping genes") fundamentally changed how we understand evolution and the complexity of DNA! 🧬🌽 #WomenInScience

Researchers in the US might be having feelings about writing grants atm-I know I am! We still need to write them. In this Evolution Exchange, I again chat with Sam Scheiner, who summarizes how to write a competitive proposal. His advice is gold, and helpful regardless of funder. Pls RT!

Society for the Study of Evolution@sse-evolution.bsky.social · 5mo ago

💬 In the second installment of The Evolution Exchange, retired NSF Program Officer Dr. Sam Scheiner returns to discuss how to craft a successful research proposal. Watch or read the transcript here: www.evolutionsociety.org/the-evolutio...

Registration is now open! Early-bird closes April 15. www.evolutionmeetings.org/registration...

Evolution 2025 Registration

Evolution 2025 - the joint conference of the SSE, ASN, and SSB

evolutionmeetings.org

While our updated paper is fast approaching book-length, the results remain the same: our method (reconcILS) is still highly accurate. So if you want to reconcile gene trees and species trees--and you might have any ILS at all--this is the best method out there! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

reconcILS: A gene tree-species tree reconciliation algorithm that allows for incomplete lineage sorting

Reconciliation algorithms infer the evolutionary history of individual gene trees given a species tree. Many reconciliation algorithms consider only duplication and loss events (and sometimes horizont...

biorxiv.org

It's been a good few weeks for cool bird genomcis - incl this, on warblers sharing colour genes through hybridisation (with evidence of between-genus introgression journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

A colorful legacy of hybridization in wood-warblers includes frequent sharing of carotenoid genes among species and genera

Introgression between species can shape evolutionary trajectories in important ways. This study of the entire family of the colorful wood-warblers (Parulidae) uses whole-genome sequencing to reveal fr...

journals.plos.org

New results on Littorina fabalis ecotypes! 🐌 Inversions aren't just enabling parallel adaptation to wave exposure in France & Sweden, they're also hotspots for site-specific differences, including a striking color QTL associated with one inversion but only in France. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Inversions support both parallel and location-specific adaptations in snail ecotypes

Replicated hybrid zones between ecotypes established over within shore environmental gradients provide an opportunity to study the genomic architecture of barriers to gene flow. The marine snail Litto...

biorxiv.org

Non-canonical sex chromosome evolution revealed by extreme heterogeneity in homomorphic Y chromosome differentiation in the common frog https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.31.697208v1

1/2🧵What a way to end 2025! NEW PAPER OUT with ppl from Uni of Bologna & @szndohrn.bsky.social Did you know that some bivalves🦪 transmit mitochondria through both the maternal and paternal lines? We looked at molecular signatures of this through comp #genomics & #RNAseq 🖥️🧬🦑 doi.org/10.1186/s129...

New insights into mitochondrial segregation from the Doubly Uniparental Inheritance system in bivalves - BMC Biology

Background While nuclear genome segregation is well characterized, mechanisms underlying mitochondrial partitioning remain partially obscure, even though its failure can cause developmental arrest or ...

doi.org

Ho et al. present genome assemblies for the parental species of the unisexual hybrid New Mexico Whiptail Lizard, using it to analyze WGS data from the hybrids, suggesting that genomes of unisexual lineages diverge more quickly than anticipated. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf228 #genome #evolution

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Multispecies pangenomes reveal a pervasive influence of population size on structural variation

Structural variants (SVs) are widespread in vertebrate genomes, yet their evolutionary dynamics remain poorly understood. Using 45 long-read de novo genome assemblies and pangenome tools, we analyze S...

science.org

Chul et al. leveraged Bird 10K genomes to explore convergent amino acid variants across phylogenetically matched control sets of bird species; they find convergent genes in six vocal learners significantly enriched in learning-related functions. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf112 #genome #evolution