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

🚨 We discovered a new mode of Hox gene regulation in annelids! 🪱 A distal enhancer acts as a "global control region", lifting Hox genes from Polycomb repression. This is reminiscent of Hox gene control in vertebrates, but the two modes likely evolved convergently. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨Job claxon🚨 4-year #Postdoc available in our lab in @camzoology.bsky.social developing molecular and anatomical approaches to mapping evolutionary changes in the brain, using #Heliconiini butterflies. Come join us, we are nice. 🧪 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

No surprise - its Optix and Ivory again - amazing predictability of gene re-use in convergent mimicry phenotypes across amazonian mimicry rings @joanameier.bsky.social @wtf-r-species.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Genetic parallelism underpins convergent mimicry coloration in Lepidoptera across 120 million years of evolution

The repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, or convergent evolution, is widespread in nature, but there are few studies investigating the genetic mechanisms across wide evolutionary timescales. This...

journals.plos.org

Zebrafish finds Nemo. New paper with our great collaborators on gap junctional communication in widely divergent species. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing peppered moth story from Saccheri lab - same locus, but different structural variants, underly parallel evolution of industrial melanism in the UK and across continental Europe.

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

Parallel evolution of industrial melanism in the peppered moth: one locus, many alleles https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.26.707722v1

A mini review on the seasonal plasticity of butterfly eyespots. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very excited to share that my first first-author pre-print is out today! Many thanks go out to all of our collaborators, especially those who helped with the fieldwork in Peru - it really wouldn't have been possible without you! 🦋

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Evolution of Reproductive Plasticity in a Seasonal Tropical Environment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.20.700078v1

Evolution rarely invents from scratch. Our recent study reveals that butterfly eyespots evolved by co-opting an ancient wing vein gene network. New trait, old genes. The study is now published in Communications Biology (featured: Jan26) www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

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 · 9mo 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

GWAS has been an incredible discovery tool for human genetics: it regularly identifies *causal* links from 1000s of SNPs to any given trait. But mechanistic interpretation is usually difficult. Our latest work on causal models for this is out yesterday: www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short🧵:

Causal modelling of gene effects from regulators to programs to traits - Nature

Approaches combining genetic association and Perturb-seq data that link genetic variants to functional programs to traits are described.

nature.com

🦣🧬🦣🤯💥We are pleased to share our new paper about ancient RNA expression profiles from the Woolly Mammoth, now published in Cell @cellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... If you want to know more, read the 🧵 below:

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hi, I'm setting up a peer support platform for ECRs in ecology & evolution in China, aiming to address a huge problem --- academic burnout driven by hyper-competition and a system that often prioritizes elite background/title over actual research. #ECR #AcademicSupport #科研互助 #ecology #evolution

🔥🔥🔥🔥New paper out; a opinion piece in @narjournal.bsky.social with Michael Hackenberg, @panosbino.bsky.social, Kevin K Peterson and @marcfriedlander.bsky.social 🔥🔥🔥🔥 „Knowing is not enough, we must apply“ academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

a statue of a man 's head with a bunch of paper coming out of it

ALT: a statue of a man 's head with a bunch of paper coming out of it

media.tenor.com

PhD position for Chinese nationals! London-based, funded by China Scholarship Council & @qmul.bsky.social "Ecology & genomics of climate adaptation: mapping functional genetic variation in wild insect populations" shorturl.at/Vfi8W DM for more info! #conservation #genomics #ecology #biodiversity

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

A personal favorite, long time in the making. Adelina and David (@dduneau.bsky.social) were instrumental in getting this done. doi.org/10.1186/s129...

Wound-induced eyespots on butterfly wings at the intersection of immune response and pigmentation development - BMC Biology

Background Butterfly eyespots are striking examples of evolutionary novelty arising through the repurposing of ancestral genetic pathways, including pathways involved in wound healing. Given the activ...

doi.org

For those interested in GRN evolution, please join us!

news.nus.edu.sg/dna-switch-b...

NUS study: A simple DNA switch helps tropical butterflies change wing patterns with the seasons

Singapore, 24 October 2025 — Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered a simple DNA “switch” that helps tropical butterflies adjust the size of their wing eyespots in ...

news.nus.edu.sg

A news article about the paper by Jennifer Brisson: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genetics of butterfly eyespot plasticity - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Transcriptional and functional analyses reveal a taxon-specific promoter at the Antennapedia gene that is responsible for seasonal plasticity in butterfly eyespots.

nature.com

Shen Tian 田申@tianshenbio.bsky.social · 11mo ago

My main PhD work @monteirolab.bsky.social is now in @natecoevo.nature.com! We found a Hox gene promoter that helps butterflies🦋adjust their wing eyespots in response to seasonal temperatures🍃🍂, shedding light on the evolutionary origin of phenotypic plasticity. 1/9 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This study @science.org finds what appears to be the long-lost RNA subunit of C. elegans telomerase. The TERC RNA is encoded within an intron of a germline-upregulated gene, nmy-2🪱🔬🧬Nematode telomerase RNA hitchhikes on introns of germline–up-regulated genes | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My main PhD work @monteirolab.bsky.social is now in @natecoevo.nature.com! We found a Hox gene promoter that helps butterflies🦋adjust their wing eyespots in response to seasonal temperatures🍃🍂, shedding light on the evolutionary origin of phenotypic plasticity. 1/9 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/3 Excited that my final PhD MS is online! Big thanks to Ullasa (PI) (vanasiri.in) & collaborators Freerk and Urszula. Turns out humidity, not just temperature, plays a major role in butterfly eyespot plasticity. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Contrasting mechanisms for using humidity as cue for seasonal polyphenism in two tropical butterflies https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.14.682489v1

New #miRNA paper from Lai lab!! 🧬🔥 some think this field, despite recent Nobel to Ambros and Ruvkun, doesn't have much surprises left. but, do we EVEN KNOW WHAT a miRNA precursor LOOKS LIKE? we found some conserved miRNA hairpins up to 10x longer than suspected. this is mir-12, just bonkers! 1/n

Our work on the function of miR-51/miR-100 is out! miR-100 is widely conserved across eumetazoans but its function has been mysterious. Emilio Santillán found in worms it regulates signaling and extracellular matrix genes, some of which seem to be conserved targets! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An ancient and essential miRNA family controls cellular interaction pathways in C. elegans

A microRNA that arose at the origin of eumetazoans regulates cell adhesion and signaling in C. elegans through conserved targets.

science.org

Excited / nervous to share the “magnum opus” of my postdoc in Andreas Wagner’s lab! "De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA" This project is the accumulation of 4 years of work, and lays the foundation for my future group. In short, we… (1/4)

De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA

Promoters are DNA sequences that help to initiate transcription. Point mutations can create de-novo promoters, which can consequently transcribe inactive genes or create novel transcripts. We know lit...

biorxiv.org

Music to my ears. This is brilliant. Either 90% of us can claim to be better musicians than Beethoven or… maybe just maybe polygenic scores aren’t perfect?

Simon Fisher@profsimonfisher.bsky.social · last yr.

If someone you know buys into claims about "genetic optimization" of embryos using polygenic scores of cognition, just send them our 2024 paper on Beethoven & musicality. We wrote it to help communicate limits of individual-level genetic predictions & complexity of links between DNA & behaviour. 🧪👇

My sister department EEB is hiring an animal evo-devo assistant prof! I'm the plant evo-devo person on the SC and happy to answer any questions! (spoiler alert: This is a GREAT place to be and with fantastic colleagues & support!!!!) @socdevbio.bsky.social illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...