Chris Jiggins

I heard you on the news headlines on Radio 4 Today.

An imaginary butterfly conjured up by AI for the purposes of illustrating a journalist's article about Melinaea and Mechanitis

@heliconians @chrisjiggins.bsky.social BUTTERFLY MADE UP BY AI! Why oh why? When you are dealing with the most diverse butterfly fauna on the planet: the neotropics! The scientific article mentioned is about Melinaea and Mechanitis (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Ithomiini). doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

This feels depressingly true….

1 in 3 doctors were born overseas.

1 in 2 builders were born overseas.

1 in 6 nurses were born overseas.

1 in 4 transport workers were born overseas.

1 in 7 UK business founders were born overseas.

1 in 5 university academics were born overseas.

The UK would be screwed without them.

Great to see some discussion of Nagoya and genome sequencing - it was a good idea that isn’t working

Group Leader - Genome Biology Unit Are you ready to lead groundbreaking research in Genome Biology? Join us at EMBL! We are seeking a motivated scientist to lead an independent research group addressing exciting and original biological...

To all post-docs: The Genome Biology dept ‪@embl.org
has an Independent faculty position. Fantastic place to set up your lab –great package: core funding, fantastic Ph.D. students, cutting edge core facilities & great colleagues. Closing date Sept 19th
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Glasswing butterfly (Mechanitis messenoides). Photo by Alex Arias

New research on glasswing butterflies🦋 by an international team of researchers, including @joanameier.bsky.social and Prof @chrisjiggins.bsky.social offers fresh insights into insect evolution and may help shape more effective conservation of these species.

Read more: bit.ly/4oi4XUo

a thin butterfly with black and orange patterns on its long, lobed wings is at rest on the shiny surface of a leaf next to what might be small eggs

A new study tracks the recent and rapid diversification of glasswing butterflies, which evolved within the last two million years in the tropics of South America.
Story:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/geno...

Study:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We have done this experiment one billion times and it has worked great all one billion times.

Complex genetic variation in nearly complete human genomes - Nature Using sequencing and haplotype-resolved assembly of 65 diverse human genomes, complex regions including the major histocompatibility complex and centromeres are analysed.

Telomere-to-telomere DNA sequencing is set to transform the field of human genetics in coming years. For a flavour of what's coming, see this exciting work on nearly complete genomes of 65 individuals from diverse populations, out today in @nature.com by @glennislogsdon.bsky.social & colleagues. 👇🧬🧪

Fantastic job, guys! #SMBE2025 has been seamlessly organized, in a beautiful venue, and with awesome science!

Figure 1. Introgression and its genomic landscapes.

"Decoding Genomic Landscapes of Introgression"
by Martin Kuhlwilm (@kuhlwilm.bsky.social) & co

"The detection of introgressed loci has evolved into a diverse methodological field encompassing summary statistics, probabilistic modeling, and supervised learning."

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

A high-resolution two-step evolution experiment in yeast reveals a shift from pleiotropic to modular adaptation Evolution is expected to involve mutations that are small and modular in effect, but recent findings suggest that mutations early in an adaptive process can have strong and pleiotropic effects. This s...

Having a great time at #smbe2025! So many great talks and conversations. Thank you again to @iamphioxus.bsky.social for the opportunity to present our work! Much of it is from the paper by @grantkinsler.bsky.social and @yuping-li.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... 1/n

Enjoying talk about black soldier flies in Shanghai with Yongping Huang and his colleagues #bsf #UKChina

So very excited for the magnum opus of my #PhD to finally be out in @pnas.org. 🎉🎉 We demosntrate that mutualistic co-mimicking tropical butterflies not only converge in light microhabitat but, as a consequence, have also converged in visual system morphology! 1/n😀
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Is it true that FAW has two strains? I have not seen genome scale data showing convincing evidence for this

Enjoying @bioboatr.bsky.social updates from Crete

I don't know if "most" are mistreated or crutches, but their share of the meat emissions is 25% - 30% of all CO2e emissions from the meat industry.
www.marketwatch.com/story/americ...

The 12th international Workshop on molecular biology and genetics of the Lepidoptera REGISTRATION NOW OPEN We are delighted to invite you to join us at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, set just outside the lovely Cretan village Kolymbari, for a stimulating and enriching event. With 150 ...

We are just starting sessions at the 2025 Workshop on Lepidopteran genetics in Kolymbari, Crete, Greece. During the week, researchers from around the world (Europe, Americas, China & Japan, etc) present research on moths and butterflies.
events.gwdg.de/event/880/
#lepgencrete

New preprint: Using pedigree data + genomics from 2,684 great tits in Wytham Woods, we explore spatial genetic structure and the role of dispersal, population turnover and immigration 🐦 With @sheldonbirds.bsky.social @nilomr.bsky.social @jon-slate.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Tweet by William Wolfe: "If you’re sad June is over, just head over to Bluesky It’s Pride Month all year round over there"

We need to promote the site this way.

#SMBE2025 Symposium 15: Transposable elements in genome evolution and biotechnology development

🔗 smbe2025.scimeeting.cn/en/web/program/25070

Sorry @erikacastro.bsky.social is here!

This is my frequent bugbear with undergraduates on epigenetics - I guess ChatGPT will only enhance general misunderstanding on this and other topics

Gene loss associated with plasticity-first evolution in Heliconius butterflies Phenotypic plasticity occurs when a genotype can produce more than one phenotype under different environmental conditions. Genetic accommodation allows plastic phenotypes to be tuned to new environmen...

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Coalescence and Translation: A Language Model for Population Genetics Probabilistic models such as the sequentially Markovian coalescent (SMC) have long provided a powerful framework for population genetic inference, enabling reconstruction of demographic history and an...

Cool new paper on pop gen and machine learning:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Join us on the Wellcome Genome Campus of the Sanger Institute and EBI for a symposium on biodiversity genomics from 27th-29th October! Abstract deadline on 14 July. There is also an option to join via Zoom, but in-person is much nicer if you can make it.

🐞 The Darwin Tree of Life Project and @sangerinstitute.bsky.social are exploring ladybird beetle diversity using the power of genomics!

Have you spotted any of these ladybugs in your backyard? 🐞
Or maybe a new one that hasn’t had its genome sequenced yet? Comment below 🧬🔍

#insectweek #diversity

A brightly stained brain caught in metamorphosis, with visible cytoskeletal tracts, large progenitor cells and many smaller cells

Congrats to @pinpilinpauxa-aaa.bsky.social for getting her image of a developing Dryas iulia brain to the final of the @wellcometrust.bsky.social photography competition in the “The Marvels of Scientific and Medical Imaging” section! One of my favourites too…

wellcome.org/engagement-a...

Here’s to the other place! Great news for Oxford Zoology