Chromosomes are often classified as either monocentric (single centromere per chr) or holocentric (centromeric activity spread across each chr).
In reality, there is a continuum in centromere organisation - and cyperids are a fascinating system to explore this in as James shows in this preprint! 🌱
David Marques was an amazing speciation genomics researcher, a passionate birder, and a wonderful friend, husband, and father. May he rest in peace. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
02.03.2026 13:44 — 👍 46 🔁 22 💬 0 📌 2
This is a Nazi move. Stripping people of rights, invalidating their IDs, setting them up for criminalization and imprisonment.
If you don't support trans rights, you support fascism.
seminar announcement with photos of speakers and talk titles
The integration of speciation seminar series is restarting, with the first session coming up on *Tuesday March 3rd @ 5pm CET*, featuring two talks by @naturalselection.bsky.social and @andreaestandia.bsky.social + career Q&A with @markravinet.bsky.social as part of the ECR in Speciation theme.
25.02.2026 16:29 — 👍 31 🔁 20 💬 1 📌 2
Evolution 2026 meeting logo. Clilp art of a globe and laptop showing a virtual presentation. Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Global Meeting Participation.
SSE is pleased to offer free virtual #Evol2026 registration to all SSE members residing in 152 countries and territories around the world including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Request your free registration code today! www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...
24.02.2026 14:43 — 👍 17 🔁 20 💬 1 📌 1
Now online! In this review, we cover four major topics on butterflies and moths: their evolutionary history and diversification dynamics, genomics, global diversity patterns, and conservation 🦋🌏 (1/8) @natrevbiodiv.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
🚨JOB alert🚨
We have three (yes, THREE) 🌟lectureships🌟 advertised in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.
Broad remit, including #AnimalBehaviour & #GlobalChangeBiology
⏱️Deadline: 8th March 2026
🙏Please circulate widely
😊Come join us!
Full #job details: tinyurl.com/y3us95rc
The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?
23.02.2026 23:35 — 👍 4283 🔁 1765 💬 42 📌 52I cannot get over how little international attention this horrendous conflict and its awful consequences receive. #Sudan
20.02.2026 07:05 — 👍 149 🔁 75 💬 5 📌 5
Cornwall Butterfly Conservation volunteers removing scrub and saplings from an area of heathland with the Carnon Valley Viaduct in the background.
Cornwall Butterfly Conservation volunteers were working with the Environment Agency in the Carnon Valley today. We were cutting back Gorse and using tree poppers to remove Birch saplings as part of heathland restoration for Grayling. The site has also supported Silver-studded Blues in the past.
19.02.2026 18:03 — 👍 26 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
The US Secretary of State has openly called for white supremacy and colonialism at the Munich Security Conference! This is so wrong.
short version: www.instagram.com/reel/DUyQQCy...
full speech: www.state.gov/releases/off...
1/12 Elon Musk is responsible for more deaths in one year than ISIS and Al-Qaeda caused in thirty.
In 2025 his "Department of Government Efficiency" dismantled USAID.
He tweeted that he fed it "into the wood chipper."
The result was a massacre 🧵
On March 3rd @ 5pm CET, we are re-starting the Integration of speciation seminar series! The first 3 sessions feature talks by *Early-Career Researchers*, and include a Q&A with an established PI about their career path.
Sign up to get the link: speciation-network.pages.ist.ac.at/seminar-seri...
Applications close for this 4-year postdoc on Feb 9th (2 days!). The associated post for a technician should be online next week 👀
07.02.2026 11:16 — 👍 5 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0
Why not publish your research with a Society Journal? 🧪🌍
The Linnean Society is committed to publishing high-quality and ground-breaking scientific research across the four themes of botany, zoology, biology and evolution, striving to make these accessible & engaging to a global audience. 🧵(1/4)
We’ve been working on this paper longer than it took adaptive alleles to cross the species barrier (in both directions) and make two pests ever more resistant to the things we throw at them.
New preprint out 🧬🌱🐛
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.
Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
I can't overrecommend this incredible paper about water skaters (genus Halobates). No one knows how they evolved. No one knows what they eat. They are superhydrophobic, which means water LITERALLY CANNOT WET THEM. Perhaps we should call them anti-water skaters? 🌊🧪
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
I had a great time at @sesbe-org.bsky.social in Valencia with lots of interesting talks in a beautiful, sunny city. It was an honour to give the closing plenary. Many thanks for inviting me.
24.01.2026 12:19 — 👍 13 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Last chance to apply - the deadline is tomorrow!
22.01.2026 20:05 — 👍 5 🔁 9 💬 0 📌 0
Working on entomology research? Join us from 29 June to 3 July in Tours, France, for the European Congress of Entomology. The abstract submission deadline was extended to 31 January. If you are interested in genomics and evolutionary novelties, apply for our symposium on this topic.
www.ece2026.org
About the PhD: Audits and evaluation of AI systems — and the broader context that AI systems operate in — have become central to conceptualising, quantifying, measuring and understanding the operations, failures, limitations, underlying assumptions, and downstream societal implications of AI systems. Existing AI audit and evaluation efforts are fractured, done in a siloed and ad-hoc manner, and with little deliberation and reflection around conceptual rigour and methodological validity. This PhD is for a candidate that is passionate about exploring what a conceptually cogent, methodologically sound, and well-founded AI evaluation and safety research might look like. This requires grappling with questions such as: What does it mean to represent “ground truth” in proxies, synthetic data, or computational simulation? How do we reliably measure abstract and complex phenomena? What are the epistemological or methodological implications of quantification and measurement approaches we choose to employ? Particularly, what underlying presuppositions, values, or perspectives do they entail? How do we ensure the lived experiences of impacted communities play a critical role in the development and justification of measurement metrics and proxies? Through exploration of these questions, the candidate is expected to engage with core concepts in the philosophy of science, history of science, Black feminist epistemologies, and similar schools of thought to develop an in-depth understanding of existing practices with the aim of applying it to advance shared standards and best practice in AI evaluation. The candidate is expected to integrate empirical (for example, through analysis or evaluation of existing benchmarks) or practical (for example, by executing evaluation of AI systems) components into the overall work.
are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me
apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a...
pls repost
If you would like to attend the funeral service in Bern, Switzerland, on Friday, January 30, and need information on how to sign up, let me know.
16.01.2026 15:18 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]
Thank you @ebpgenome.bsky.social for highlighting @projectpsyche.bsky.social
If you want to learn more about the large-scale genomics project on Lepidoptera in Europe, we introduce the project in our paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Want to study the genomics of repeated adaptation with data from hundreds of species? New funding for non-Canadians @ grad or postdoc level. Internal competition at UCalgary with very short deadline so please get in touch ASAP!!
sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...
PhD defense of David Marques, seen between his two PhD mentors, Ole Seehausen (left) and Laurent Excoffier (right). He is wearing a hat, which is traditional in Bern. It represents his PhD with an FST plot and sticklebacks.
David Marques at the wedding of his PhD sister, Joana Meier.
David carrying heavy gear on fieldwork with one of his study objects, a sea gull.
Earlier this week, David Marques, my beloved PhD brother, died after a battle with cancer. He was an amazing person, friend, father, husband, scientist, collaborator, birder, among other things. I am immensely grateful for many years of friendship and close collaboration with him. We miss you!
10.01.2026 09:14 — 👍 64 🔁 7 💬 13 📌 1
On March 27, 2003, for example, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that Iraq’s oil revenues could bring between US$50 and $100 billion within two or three years following the country’s liberation. “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.
For no reason whatsoever, I’m reminding you that before the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration said that Iraq’s oil revenue would fund everything.
www.meforum.org/middle-east-...
Come and join me and my colleagues at the Department of Biology, #LundUniversity in #sweden! We have am open position as Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Biodiversity.
Apply here no later than February 11 2026:
https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:848749/type:job/where:4/apply:1
A #genomics-informed framework for evaluating when genetic rescue—introducing unrelated individuals to increase genetic diversity & reduce inbreeding—is likely to succeed www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #biodiversity
03.01.2026 12:00 — 👍 12 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0