Thomas Lesaffre 🌱

Next week's DEE External Seminar welcomes Andrew Pomiankowski (hosted by Charles Mullon) with a talk on mitochondrial quality and the evolution of sexes. 12:15, November 6th at the Biophore Amphitheatre or online via REC-UNIL.

Next week's DEE External Seminar welcomes Andrew Pomiankowski (hosted by @charlesmullon.bsky.social ) with a talk on mitochondrial quality and the evolution of sexes. 12:15, November 6th at the Biophore Amphitheatre or online via REC-UNIL.

Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies Certain genes, chromosomes, organelles, or entire sets of chromosomes can bias their transmission to the next generation, propagating themselves at the expense of the rest of the genome. Referred to …

(1/9) Join us in Bern, Switzerland (8–11 Feb 2026) for our EMBO Workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies!

Organized with Tanja Schwander, Laura Ross (@laurarossevo.bsky.social) and Axel Imhof.

meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel...

#EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

Encore une fois il a plié cette obscénité mise en scène tout au long de la journée d’hier.
Propre, carré, clinique.
On peut passer à autre chose

Avez-vous déjà vu... un tardigrade faire le tour de sa petite planète de cellules d'algue Volvox ?
Maintenant oui 😊

Cette vidéo a été classée 4ème au concours de microphotographie Nikon Small World 2025.

www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

cc @eloscicomm.bsky.social 😉

Exciting news!
The next #PopGroup meeting will take place in Lille 🍟, France, 7–9 January 2026 – just 1 hour by train from London, Brussels, and Paris.

This year, PopGroup will also host ALPHY, the annual meeting of Evolutionary Genomics.

More info: populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk

See you there !

A method for identifying local adaptation in structured populations Species occupy diverse, heterogeneous environments, which expose populations to spatially varied selective pressures. Populations in different environments can diverge due to local adaptation. However...

In 2020, O Gaggiotti, J Goudet and I showed that Qst-Fst comparison was uncalibrated with high population structure.

During her PhD with us, Isa do O developed LogAV: a method that accounts for any population structure while testing for local adaptation :
journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Fig. 1 (shortened, full legend in paper): Advances in characterizing plant sex chromosomes using genomics in the last 15 years. Most of the systems have been characterized using non-standard methods (see text). References to this work are: Silene latifolia (Bergero and Charlesworth, 2011; Chibalina and Filatov, 2011; Muyle et al., 2012), Carica papaya (Wang et al., 2012), Diospyros lotus (Akagi et al., 2014), Rumex hastatulus (Hough et al., 2014), Asparagus officinalis (Harkess et al., 2017), Rumex rothschildianus (Crowson et al., 2017), Actinidia chinensis (Akagi et al., 2018), Fragaria species (Tennessen et al., 2018), Phoenix dactylifera (Torres et al., 2018), Mercurialis annua (Veltsos et al., 2019), Silene otites and Silene colpophylla (Balounova et al., 2019; Martin et al., 2019), Cannabis sativa (Prentout et al., 2020), Coccinia grandis (Fruchard et al., 2020), Populus and Salix species (Müller et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020a, b)...

🌸 FLOWERING NEWSLETTER REVIEW 🌸

🧬 Since the discovery of the first plant sex-determining gene, more than 20 other genes have been identified. Here Marais et al. review what this tells us about the evolution of separate sexes (dioecy) in angiosperms 🌸

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...
#PlantScience 🧪

Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals Speciation, the process by which new reproductively isolated species emerge from ancestral populations, results from the gradual accumulation of barriers to gene flow within genomes. To date, the noti...

Check out this cool work from @crouxevo.bsky.social and others, congrats!!! 🥳
Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Allez
Pas besoin de grands discours pour résumer la situation.
Juste 1 minute d’orfèvrerie

How does stochasticity in learning impact the accumulation of knowledge and the evolution of learning? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.26.672373v1

Pre-print now out on bioRxiv! If you saw my talk at #eseb and want more info, here it is:

If you like cooperation, dispersal, modelling, or you just want to have a chat, come to see me poster P03.050 #ESEB2050

My poster P02.385 is now up on its board! Come say hi if you want to learn about the role of sexual conflict in transitions from combined to separate sexes is plants! 🌱 #ESEB2025

Delighted to have our work on the joint emergence of dioecy and sexual dimorphism be part of this wonderful special issue!

I will be presenting this at @eseb2025.bsky.social in a couple of weeks, poster P02.385 on Aug 19th. Feel free to pop by! ☺️

Volume 38 Issue 7 | Journal of Evolutionary Biology | Oxford Academic Journal of Evolutionary Biology

NEW SPECIAL ISSUE JUST RELEASED!

Sex unfolded: sex, asex, sexes. Read the introductory editorial by Guest Editors D. Roze, S Glemin, @thomaslenormand.bsky.social & K. Van Doninck here: academic.oup.com/jeb/issue/38/7

Fantastic cover art by Caroline Blanc.

The evolution of tandem repeat sequences under partial selfing and different modes of selection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.04.663195v1

PhD fellowship available 📢!
We are offering a 3-year fully funded PhD fellowship at the interface between functional ecology and quantitative genetics in Montpellier FR ! (Application deadline 31 July)

The evolution of sex-specific gene expression in polygenic traits Abstract. Selection often favours different phenotypes in males and females, driving the evolution of sex-specific genetic architectures that facilitate se

The evolution of sex-specific gene expression in polygenic traits

@ewanflintham.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Interested in the evolution of molecular interactions ? We are recruiting a new PhD student with a background in proteomics to study the diversification of the receptor-ligand interaction controlling plant self-incompatibility.
--> details here : initiative-excellence.univ-lille.fr/fileadmin/us...

Sexual antagonism, mating systems, and recombination suppression on sex chromosomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.15.654257v1

I think you guys have no idea how hypocritical this guy is being. He’s been steadily defunding research and higher ed since he came into power and is about to cut 3 more billions from the budget next year. This is all posturing!

Avec vos blagues de papes, on pourrait en avoir un de chez moi, comme ça le pape est Vaudois.

Applications now open for UNIL Summer School on Modelling for Evo Bio (1–6 Sept 2025, Lausanne)!
Aimed at PhD students interested in formal approaches to evolutionary ecology questions like sexual selection, social & life-history evolution. Scholarships available.
Pls share! www.shorturl.at/znk5g

1/7 Cumulative culture/knowledge occurs when information builds up across generations through a combination of innovation and transmission. In our new paper, we investigate the role of teaching and its coevolution with learning in this process.

🔗 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Deleterious mutations and selection for sex in spatially structured, diploid populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.22.634382v1

The maintenance of genetic polymorphism underlying sexually antagonistic traits Abstract. Selection often favors different trait values in males and females, leading to genetic conflicts between the sexes when traits have a shared gene

1/7 Sexual antagonism arises when males and females face different selection pressures for a trait influenced by shared genes. This is thought to drive balancing selection and maintain genetic polymorphism. We challenge this view in our recent paper :

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae059

The maintenance of genetic polymorphism underlying sexually antagonistic traits Abstract. Selection often favors different trait values in males and females, leading to genetic conflicts between the sexes when traits have a shared gene

The maintenance of genetic polymorphism underlying sexually antagonistic traits
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by Ewan Flintham et al.

The joint evolution of separate sexes and sexual dimorphism Abstract. Dioecious plants are frequently sexually dimorphic. Such dimorphism, which reflects responses to selection acting in opposite directions for male

1/7 Very happy to share our latest paper on the joint evolution of separate sexes and sexual dimorphism in @jevbio.bsky.social, led by @thomaslesaffre.bsky.social and in collaboration with John Pannell at @dee-unil.bsky.social

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voae136

Thrilled to share this new paper now out in @jevbio.bsky.social ! 🌺